On September 28, the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball named Meritus Park its Ballpark of the Year. The Hagerstown ballpark has now taken the award three seasons running, and it has won in every season it has opened. League members vote on the award at the close of each season. It recognizes the venue that best exemplifies customer service, cleanliness, and overall hospitality and ambience.
That distinction rewards a rare thing. This is not an architecture prize, and architects did not decide it. Instead, the people who operate ballparks for a living decided it. They judged which building works best to run and best to visit. Pendulum Studio served as Lead Designer and Architect of Record for Meritus Park. Of all the ways anyone can measure a building, we watch this one closest.
Meritus Park has won Ballpark of the Year in every season it has opened
A new ballpark draws attention simply for being new. Novelty does not last, however, and it rarely survives a second look. Meritus Park opened in May 2024. The league has named it the best facility in the circuit every season since, including the one now closing. By now, the building is no longer new. It is simply still the answer.
The gap between a strong opening and a legitimate facility is the whole point. One is a moment. The other, however, holds up long after that moment passes. It absorbs full seasons, ordinary weeknights, weather, staff turnover and steady wear. Clearly, Meritus Park sits firmly in the second category. Three straight votes from the people who run these buildings confirm that as honestly as anything can.
Why the building holds up
We designed Meritus Park against S.C.O.R.E., the framework Pendulum Studio applies to every facility. It treats a stadium as a long-term civic system rather than a singular architectural object. In practice, it asks five questions of every decision. Each one shaped something you can still point at in Hagerstown.
Site Integration put the ballpark inside downtown Hagerstown rather than beside it. The building joins the city’s fabric instead of parking next to it. Community Connection shaped a venue that works on nights without a game, which covers most nights of the year. Operational Efficiency drove the 360 degree concourse, the service routes and the back of house. Together those let a modest staff run a full event cleanly, and the league votes on exactly that.
Revenue Innovation produced a range of seating and gathering products, so the building sells far more than a seat. Experience Design explains why people describe Meritus Park as feeling larger and more generous than its 4,000 seats. Operators choosing the same building three years running comes as close to proof as this framework gets. After all, they are not evaluating drawings. They are telling you what running the place actually feels like.
Pendulum Studio won this commission in open competition rather than by appointment. The Maryland Stadium Authority ran the selection. Pendulum advanced from an initial qualifications submission against a field of at least four peer firms. The short list followed, and then final contract negotiation. That history matters to the result. A firm that must argue for the work arrives having already thought hard about the building.
From Jonathan O’Neil Cole, Founder and Principal, Pendulum Studio
The third year is the one I am grateful for. Any new ballpark gets a look in its opening season, and we would have been proud of that on its own. Three straight says something else. It says the building is not a novelty. It is legitimate, and it earns its place in a serious baseball marketplace every night it opens the gates. That is the acknowledgment that means something to me. Credit belongs to the Maryland Stadium Authority for believing in Pendulum against stiff competition. It belongs to Hagerstown for insisting on a real building downtown, to the Flying Boxcars for running it the way they do, and to every trade that put it up. Our job was to make sure the design could carry all of it, for a long time.
About Meritus Park
Meritus Park opened on May 4, 2024 in downtown Hagerstown, Maryland. The $69.5 million multi-use sports and events facility seats 4,000, with 2,800 of those fixed. The Hagerstown-Washington County Industrial Foundation owns the building, and the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars of the Atlantic League play there. Pendulum Studio served as Lead Designer and Architect of Record. More of the practice’s work in this sector sits under sports facilities.
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