Nearly six decades after Stonecliffe Recreation Area emerged along the Tulpehocken Creek as a new kind of public park for Reading and Berks County, the community is once again being asked to help decide what comes next.
Stonecliffe Recreation Area has never been a place that simply stood still.
Over the decades, the park along the Tulpehocken Creek has changed with the people who used it. Children climbed its playground equipment. Families gathered for picnics. Athletes took to its fields and courts. Generations fished along the creek. There was even a time when residents could ice skate there.
Later came skateboarders, BMX riders and scooters.
Now another chapter in Stonecliffe’s long recreational history is beginning.
On Monday, September 14, 2026, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Berks County Parks & Recreation and American Ramp Company will hold a community input meeting at Stonecliffe Action Park to hear directly from residents and riders about what they would like to see in a redesigned Stonecliffe Skatepark.
The meeting will be held at Stonecliffe Action Park, 1101–1199 Columbia Street in Reading. In the event of rain, the meeting will move nearby to Christ Lutheran Church in Glenside, 1301 Luzerne Street.
The message to the community is simple: show up and help design the park you want to use.
Organizers are encouraging skateboarders, BMX riders, scooter riders, families, neighbors and other park users to participate because the ideas collected at the meeting will help shape the final design.
And in many ways, asking the public what it wants at Stonecliffe is entirely in keeping with the history of the park.
A Recreation Area Built for a Changing City
Stonecliffe occupies an important place in the history of Berks County’s public parks.
The recreation area became the first park in the County Park System along the Tulpehocken Creek, part of the larger Tulpehocken Creek Valley Parkway that today connects a series of recreational and historic areas including Stonecliffe, the Leisure Area, Gring’s Mill, Red Bridge Park and the Heritage Center. (Go Reading Berks)
Stonecliffe was considered unusually progressive for its era because planners approached it as what was described as a “complete design concept.” Instead of simply preserving an open piece of land, the plan combined landscaping with purpose-built recreation facilities and new styles of playground equipment intended to be durable and useful to people of different ages.
Its development occurred in stages.
The first phase created the fundamentals of the park — grading, parking, seating, restrooms and picnic facilities. A second phase introduced playground equipment, including equipment that departed from the traditional swings and moving playground devices common at the time. A third phase expanded Stonecliffe’s athletic uses with fields intended for softball, football and soccer.
By the spring of 1969, Stonecliffe was becoming a destination significant enough to receive considerable public attention.
A Reading-area newspaper clipping from May 1969 announced the upcoming dedication of the new recreation area and even printed a map showing Reading residents how to find it.
The article instructed motorists to approach through Columbia or Lehigh streets and identified the park between the Tulpehocken Creek, Columbia Street, the Warren Street Bypass and West Shore Bypass.
The dedication was scheduled for Memorial Day at 4 p.m.
Looking at that old map today is striking. The highways and streets surrounding Stonecliffe are immediately recognizable, but what was then being introduced as a relatively new recreation area has since become part of the landscape of Reading.
For generations of residents, Stonecliffe simply became “the park.”
Stonecliffe Was Always Experimental
Stonecliffe’s history is filled with attempts to give residents new ways to use public space.
One of the more unusual early attractions was an outdoor ice-skating rink. Keeping it frozen required workers to continually add water to the surface at night. As winter progressed and the macadam beneath it absorbed more heat, maintaining suitable ice became increasingly difficult, and the experiment eventually disappeared.
Fishing became another familiar part of Stonecliffe.
The original fishing dock was wooden — until the devastating flood produced by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 swept it away. It was later replaced by a concrete structure.
That fishing area is once again undergoing change. The removal of Bushong’s Dam in September 2025 altered the water level and course of the Tulpehocken Creek. Berks County subsequently closed the concrete fishing pier because it no longer reaches the water and is studying possibilities for providing new water access.
It is another reminder that Stonecliffe has repeatedly had to adapt — sometimes because recreation changed, and sometimes because the creek itself changed.
Then Came the Skateboarders
Eventually another generation discovered Stonecliffe.
Skateboarding, BMX riding, inline skating and scooters became part of the park’s identity, and Stonecliffe Action Park was developed with ramps, rails, ledges, quarter pipes, a pyramid, spine and other street- and transition-style features.
For young people growing up around Reading, Stonecliffe became much more than a collection of metal ramps.
It became a meeting place.
Kids learned their first tricks there. More experienced riders pushed one another to improve. Parents watched from the sidelines. Friendships developed around skateboards and bikes.
The park eventually attracted riders well beyond Reading.
But skateboarding changed dramatically after the original Stonecliffe facility was built. Modern concrete parks increasingly emphasize flow, bowls, transitions, plazas and obstacles incorporated directly into the landscape rather than relying primarily upon prefabricated ramps sitting on a flat paved surface.
Reading itself demonstrated that change with the development of its newer skatepark. By 2025, there was already discussion of eventually transforming Stonecliffe into a complementary facility where beginners could develop their skills before moving on to the larger Reading Skatepark.
Stonecliffe’s Action Park is presently closed while Berks County evaluates its renovation. The County has continued to publicly state that it intends to restore and improve the skatepark for future use.
The September 14 meeting represents an important step toward determining exactly what that future will look like.
Community Input Has Shaped Stonecliffe Before
There is also a nice historical symmetry to the upcoming meeting.
This will not be the first time residents have helped influence how Stonecliffe looks.
In 2011, murals were created on the walls of the park’s main building depicting many of the activities associated with Stonecliffe — biking, fishing, walking, jogging, boating, soccer, basketball, picnicking and the Action Park.
Stonecliffee Park Mural
Those mural designs incorporated ideas gathered through public meetings and community input.
Fifteen years later, the community is again being invited to help shape part of Stonecliffe.
This time the canvas is the skatepark itself.
What Should Stonecliffe Look Like for the Next Generation?
That is ultimately the question facing people who attend the September meeting.
Should a rebuilt Stonecliffe emphasize younger and beginning skaters? Should it incorporate features for experienced riders as well? Should there be bowls, banks, rails, ledges, transition features or a combination of street and park skating? How should BMX bikes and scooters fit into the plan? What would make parents comfortable bringing children there? And what kind of park will still be useful twenty or thirty years from now?
Those are precisely the kinds of questions that are best answered by the people who will actually use the facility.
American Ramp Company, which is participating with Berks County Parks & Recreation in the community meeting, specializes in skatepark and action-sports facilities. But even the best designers need something that cannot be created at a drafting table:
local knowledge.
People who have skated Stonecliffe know what worked.
They know what did not.
They know what they wish had been there when they were learning.
And today’s young riders may have completely different ideas from the generation that first rode the park.
From 1969 to 2026
There is something fitting about all of this.
In 1969, residents were being given directions to a new recreation area along the Tulpehocken Creek and invited to see a new public playground built for their community.
Nearly 60 years later, another generation is being invited back to the same ground — this time not merely to see what government has built, but to help decide what should be built next.
Stonecliffe has survived floods, changing recreational tastes, vandalism, reconstruction, infrastructure projects and the changing course of the Tulpehocken itself.
Its playgrounds have changed.
Its fishing dock has changed.
Its athletic facilities have changed.
And now its skatepark will change.
But the basic idea behind Stonecliffe has remained remarkably consistent since those early days: create a place along the creek where people of different ages can come together and enjoy their community.
The September 14 meeting is therefore about much more than choosing ramps and rails.
It is an opportunity to help determine what Stonecliffe will mean to the next generation of Reading and Berks County kids.
Community Input Meeting
Monday, September 14, 2026 — 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Stonecliffe Action Park
1101–1199 Columbia Street, Reading, PA 19601
Rain location: Christ Lutheran Church in Glenside, 1301 Luzerne Street, Reading.
Hosted by Berks County Parks & Recreation and American Ramp Company.
If you skate, ride BMX, use a scooter, bring your children to Stonecliffe, grew up using the park, or simply care about its future, this is the opportunity to make your voice part of Stonecliffe’s next chapter.
GoReadingBerks: Stonecliffe Park – Tulpehocken Creek Valley Parkway
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