Severna Park, MD

Severna Park occupies the land between the Severn and Magothy rivers, where creeks divide the shoreline into coves and peninsulas. Anne Arundel County provides municipal services and land-use government, while community associations handle many neighborhood concerns. Most of the Magothy shoreline is privately held, and public access to the river is limited. The Magothy River Association works with roughly 30 community associations on water monitoring, restoration, and shoreline issues. Those conditions make river access and stewardship strongly neighborhood-based: a community beach or pier may be central to one subdivision, while a nearby household reaches the water through the few county or state sites open to the wider public. The community’s longest public corridor follows a former railroad. Anne Arundel County’s paved B&A Trail runs 13.3 miles between Glen Burnie and Annapolis along the route that once carried trains between Baltimore and the state capital.

In Severna Park, the 1889 Earleigh Heights building began as a general store, later served as a railroad station and post office, and now houses a trail ranger station and railroad museum. The building preserves the line’s transportation history at a point still used by cyclists, runners, and pedestrians. Near the center of the community, Hatton-Regester Green adds a gazebo, gardens, and seating beside the trail corridor. The right-of-way gives Severna Park a continuous north-south public route even though its civic spaces and shops are dispersed. Ritchie Highway, Maryland Route 2, is Severna Park’s main commercial corridor. Shopping centers, restaurants, professional offices, and service businesses line the corridor, with Park Plaza and the Marketplace among its larger commercial sites.

Anne Arundel County’s adopted Region 4 plan treats this area as Severna Park’s principal commercial and redevelopment corridor. Shared indoor life is distributed among county and nonprofit institutions. The Severna Park Library hosts classes, meetings, children’s programs, and local events, while the nonprofit Severna Park Community Center operates a 25-yard pool, a therapy pool, fitness and arts activities, and programs with community partners. In 2026, its partner roster included nearly two dozen organizations offering educational, creative, active, and social programs. These destinations place shopping, services, learning, and recreation along or near the same north-south corridor as the trail and highway. Civic life also runs through associations and the business chamber.

The Greater Severna Park Council brings neighborhood groups together on planning, transportation, public services, and environmental questions. The chamber of commerce, formed in 1957, supports local businesses and has organized an annual Fourth of July parade since 1975. The parade brings bands, decorated vehicles, civic groups, and spectators onto local roads each July. The river association, founded in 1946, supplies a longer environmental thread through monitoring and restoration on the Magothy. With no town council of its own, Severna Park brings planning and service questions to county processes through groups organized by residents and businesses. Amid short neighborhood streets ending at privately held coves, the B&A Trail remains a 13.3-mile public route through the center of Severna Park.