Paving on the Route 27 shared-use path in Westminster, the project residents have nicknamed the "Boardwalk to Nowhere," has slipped past its August target. The Maryland State Highway Administration told Westminster Wire that crews found a City of Westminster manhole sitting too low to grade around safely, and that scheduling conflicts with the contractor and subcontractors as well as stretches of bad weather added to the delay.
The agency now says grading will happen in October, followed by paving, with the project expected to reach substantial completion later this fall. That date could still move. A State Highway Administration spokesperson said paving has temperature requirements, which makes late-season work harder to schedule.
It is the latest setback for a project that started construction in fall 2023 and has already been paused twice.
What the project is
The path runs along Maryland Route 27 (Manchester Road) from Hahn Road, near the Penguin Random House facility, to Railroad Avenue just past the Route 140 bridge. It is the final piece of the Westminster Community Trail, a network of paths linking the Westminster Community Pond, the Commerce Center, the Autumn Ridge and Eden Farms neighborhoods, Bennett Cerf Park and downtown Westminster. Carroll County describes the trail as a multi-phase project that has been underway since 2010.
The State Highway Administration, part of the Maryland Department of Transportation, is building the $4.2 million project at the county's request. The state will own the finished path, and the Carroll County Department of Parks and Recreation will maintain it under a 2021 memorandum of understanding with the State Highway Administration.
The nickname comes from the path's three raised boardwalk sections. According to the State Highway Administration, the path follows Longwell Run, a stream, and those three sections cross floodplain that can't support a paved path at ground level. The rest of the path will be paved.
The state's project page also notes one planned break in the path, between the area west of the Route 140 bridge and east of Tuc Road, to accommodate local business operations.
Why the paving is late
In an Aug. 7 email, Elizabeth Harris, community relations manager for the State Highway Administration's District 7, told Westminster Wire that the agency expected grading and paving "to begin later this month." That didn't happen.
Asked this week what changed, Shanteé Felix, media relations manager for the State Highway Administration, said in an email to Westminster Wire that the schedule "had to be adjusted for several reasons."
During preparation work, Felix said, crews found a conflict with an existing City of Westminster manhole at Structure #3, the third of the path's three boardwalk sections. The manhole "was too low to safely accommodate grading work," she wrote. The project also ran into scheduling conflicts with the contractor and subcontractors, along with periods of unfavorable weather that pushed the schedule back further.
The manhole has since been raised, according to both Felix and Harris.
The new schedule
Harris and Felix gave Westminster Wire this timeline:
Storm drain work: scheduled to start the last week of September, Harris said Sept. 24.
Grading: planned for October.
Paving: to follow grading, in the sections between the boardwalk structures.
Substantial completion: anticipated "in late fall," Harris said. Felix said the project is expected to reach that point "later this fall."
The State Highway Administration's project page, updated Sept. 24, lists the project as 70% complete and all three boardwalk structures as 95% complete.
Both spokespeople cautioned that the schedule depends on the weather. "This time of the year can be challenging with construction work because certain activities (like paving) have temperature requirements," Harris wrote. Felix said the schedule "remains weather-dependent."
A project with a long list of delays
The paving slip is the most recent in a series of holdups:
Fall 2023: Construction began, according to the State Highway Administration.
Two pauses: Onsite work has been paused twice to resolve utility conflicts and relocations, according to the State Highway Administration. One of those pauses began in spring 2024, Carroll News reported. The utility relocations, along with design and permitting, brought the budget to $4.2 million, the outlet reported.
April 2025: Construction was back underway, and officials expected the project to be finished by spring 2026, Carroll News reported.
August 2026: Grading and paving between the boardwalk structures were expected to begin that month, Harris said Aug. 7. The work was pushed to October.
Westminster Wire covered the project's full history in June. Project details and a map are on the State Highway Administration project page.