Does Our NJ Town Have a Shot at Green Acres Funding?
Last Updated: July 2026
In This Guide
A few towns over from my showroom in Midland Park, the playground at the Pulis Avenue field in Franklin Lakes is closed. It's being replaced with a fully inclusive playground, one built so kids and adults with and without disabilities can play in the same space. New Jersey's DEP and the Garden State Preservation Trust approved a $750,000 grant that funds 75% of the project, with the remaining quarter coming from local sources.
They didn't buy their equipment from me. What follows is the process that got them that check. The rules changed for the 2026 round in ways that matter to every town in the state, including one change that can take a local match to zero.
If you handle recreation, parks, or capital planning for a New Jersey municipality (or you write grants for one), this is the funding source that matters most for playgrounds. I've been in this business since 2013, and the assumption I hear most often is that a town doesn't qualify for this money. As of this round, every municipality does. Some of what follows also overlaps with how commercial playground projects get budgeted in New Jersey, so I'll keep the numbers concrete.
Are We Even Eligible?
On paper your odds just improved. What changed for 2026 was who gets a grant versus who gets offered only a loan, and a lot of towns moved into the grant column for the first time.
Applicants can now submit up to three applications in a single round: one each for land acquisition, park development, and stewardship. A playground replacement goes in as park development. If you're also buying an adjacent parcel or doing trail work, those are separate asks that don't compete with your playground.
What changed in the 2026 funding round
- Every park development project is now eligible for a minimum 25% grant, including those sponsored by standard municipalities. DEP's announcement put the number of towns previously limited to loans at 402.
- Up to three applications per applicant, one per category
- Geographic limits on nonprofit park development projects were removed statewide
- Inclusive playgrounds carry a 25-point funding premium, replacing the concluded Jake's Law Pilot
That third one is quietly a big deal. A nonprofit (a conservancy, a friends-of-the-park group, a community organization) can now apply for park development funding anywhere in New Jersey. If your town has a nonprofit partner, that's a second door into the same building.
Demand consistently exceeds the money available. That's Green Acres' own language, and it's why awards come with caps. The application also publishes a list of twelve things that disqualify you before ranking even begins. Two of those will decide more NJ playground projects than anything else on this page.
The second one is administrative. A municipality or nonprofit carrying three or more open Green Acres projects (or a county carrying five or more) isn't eligible to submit a new application at all. The same applies to applicants who haven't adequately addressed outstanding compliance issues on past awards. Green Acres notifies affected applicants, but August is a better time to find out than February. One more scoping rule: a park development application can only cover improvements at one project site, so multi-park applications are out.
How Much Would We Have to Come Up With?
Your share depends on two things: what kind of applicant you are, and whether the project earns the premium. The premium is where the real money moves, so start there rather than with the base rate.
| Project category | Grant | With premium |
|---|---|---|
| Municipally sponsored (non-Urban Aid) | 25% | 50% |
| County sponsored (non-Urban Aid) | 50% | 75% |
| Project located in an Urban Aid municipality | 75% | 100% |
| Nonprofit | 50% | Not available |
The premium adds 25 percentage points, and a local government earns it one of two ways. Either the project sits in (or is easily reachable from) an Overburdened Community Subject to Adverse Cumulative Stressors, which is a defined census block group designation you can look up. Or the project is a Completely Inclusive Playground.
It applies once. Meet both criteria and it doesn't stack.
Look at that third row again, because it's the most consequential line in the program. A completely inclusive playground located in an Urban Aid municipality reaches 100% grant funding, and the application says that apart from projects funded at 100%, Green Acres money has to be matched. So there's no local share to find, up to the award cap, which has historically run $1.2M to $1.4M for an Urban Aid municipality. Design past the cap and the overage is back on you. If you're in one of NJ's Urban Aid municipalities and you've been putting a playground off because you couldn't cover the match, that obstacle may be gone.
One detail that's easy to miss: this category goes by where the project IS, not who applies. A county sponsoring a project inside an Urban Aid municipality lands in the same category.
Also worth knowing before you plan around Franklin Lakes: their $750,000 at 75% came through the Jake's Law Pilot Program, which has since ended. The Completely Inclusive Playground premium replaced it. A standard municipality doing that same project today is looking at 50%. An Urban Aid town is looking at 100%, better than what Franklin Lakes got.
Can We Afford the Inclusive Version?
Maybe, and the honest answer depends on what your site already has. A Completely Inclusive Playground isn't a design philosophy you can lean toward. It's a defined standard in Department of Community Affairs regulation, it's a checklist, and it's all-or-nothing. Miss one required item and you get no premium at all.
What DCA requires for a Completely Inclusive Playground
- Fencing around the playground, using traditional materials or natural barriers like hedges
- Shade over at least 20% of the square footage of unitary surface and equipment
- Unitary surfacing around the equipment and on pathways to unconnected play areas, which rules out loose engineered wood fiber
- A family or assisted-use toilet room, but only if restrooms already serve the site. DCA doesn't require you to build new ones where none exist.
- Parking per local ordinance, including an accessible route with a curb cut
- Quiet play areas, identified by the playground manager
- Play components addressing physical, sensory, cognitive, social, emotional, imaginative and communication needs
- 50% of elevated play elements accessible, plus 25% of single-function and 25% of multi-function play activities
Read N.J.A.C. 5:23-7.19 and 5:23-7.31 yourself, or hand them to your construction code official. And there's a Completely Inclusive Playground Checklist that has to go in with the application to get the premium at all: item 13 on the submissions list.
What Do We Need in Hand Before We Apply?
Two work streams run in parallel here, and towns tend to underrate the first one. There's the community side, which is a hard eligibility requirement and reads like boilerplate until you look closely. And there's the budget side, which decides whether the project you designed is even fundable.
Skip it and you are not getting funded. Applications that don't demonstrate community involvement during the planning stage "will not be funded." That's the application's own wording, not my paraphrase. And if you're thinking the public hearing covers it, it doesn't. The hearing is separate, and it's additional. Engagement means a community survey, a community meeting, or both, advertised through your official website, your social media, and your newsletter if you have one.
The engagement requirements, specifically
- A community survey and/or a community meeting, at least one is mandatory
- Advertised on your website, social media, and newsletter if one exists
- Scheduled at least 15 days before the public hearing, preferably 30, so feedback can actually be incorporated
- Surveys have to include open-ended questions, not just checkboxes
- The application must document the outreach, summarize the input, and describe how it changed the plans
- Broad input. Green Acres explicitly warns against limiting it to the open space committee or one sports league
That last one matters most if you're going inclusive. Talk to families of kids with disabilities, and put it in the summary. They're the one group named specifically, and a reviewer reading that you consulted the people the playground is for stops wondering whether you thought this through.
Franklin Lakes is worth looking at as a model, though it's an affluent borough that had its local match on hand, and that's part of why the project moved. What travels to any town regardless of budget is the process. They pursued an inclusive playground, which carries the premium. The project replaced equipment at an existing park rather than adding an amenity. And for their next Green Acres application, on court improvements, the borough put a public Recreation Committee meeting on the calendar in January to gather resident input.
Documented need is the other half. Letters from your school district, pediatricians, disability advocates, the recreation committee, parents who turned up. A funded playground in the next town over is not evidence that YOUR park needs one. Residents showing up to a meeting to say so is.
How Do We Put a Real Number on This?
Before you fall in love with a design, know this: your project has to fit the money that exists, and getting that wrong doesn't cost you points. It costs you the application.
Green Acres caps awards. You're expected to design a project whose total cost fits inside your likely award plus your match. And a project that would need money from a later Green Acres round to finish "will be deemed ineligible," in the application's words. That cost estimate is what decides whether you designed an eligible project. Here are the caps Green Acres published from the last four rounds, for planning purposes:
| Applicant type | Funding round cap range, 2021–2025 |
|---|---|
| Standard municipality | $600,000 – $700,000 |
| Highly or densely populated municipality | $900,000 – $1,050,000 |
| Urban Aid municipality | $1,200,000 – $1,400,000 |
| Standard county | $1,200,000 – $1,400,000 |
| Highly populated county | $1,500,000 – $1,750,000 |
| Densely populated county | $1,800,000 – $2,100,000 |
Treat those as a planning target, not a promise. The real cap moves with how many towns apply that year. But your cap plus your match is the ceiling your project has to live under, and it's worth knowing before an architect draws anything.
Which is why "playground: $400,000" won't survive review. An equipment list, a surfacing type with square footage, site work, installation, and a contingency — that's the minimum. And if you're going for the inclusive premium, your description, concept plan and cost estimate all have to line up with every required element. The budget is how you prove the design actually qualifies.
Getting a quote does NOT commit you to anything, by the way. Public bidding, cooperative purchasing, state contract. Whatever path your town uses, that happens later at purchase (you know your own rules there better than I do). What the application needs is a credible itemized number from someone who sells and installs this equipment.
What belongs in a grant-ready cost estimate
Equipment. Itemized by component, with manufacturer model numbers, age ranges served, capacity, and use zone dimensions. Use zone, not the equipment footprint. They're different measurements, and the use zone is what determines whether your design fits the site.
Surfacing. Type, square footage, and critical fall height rating. Poured-in-place rubber and loose engineered wood fiber are separated by a wide cost gap and only one of them holds up as an accessible route over time. This single line moves a budget more than any other.
Installation. Budget 35% to 50% of equipment cost. Removal and disposal of the old structure is its own line, easy to leave out, and not cheap.
Site work. This one I can't give you a range for. Drainage, grading, access for equipment, what's under the surface. Land varies so much between sites that any number I gave you without walking it would be a guess.
Contingency. 10%. Cheap insurance against a bid coming back high.
What I do on this is straightforward. You tell me the space, the age groups, and roughly what you're trying to accomplish, and I put together an itemized quote with specs, use zone dimensions, surfacing scope, and installation, formatted so it drops into a grant application, at no charge.
What I don't do is write your application. I'm not a grant writer. For larger park projects there are NJ grant consulting firms that do this for a living and often recover their fee out of what they secure, and I'm happy to point you toward the ones I know. Just remember that if the playground is going in as a Completely Inclusive Playground, bundling it with the rest of the park scope costs you the premium.
Send me a site and I'll send back a number. Dimensions and the age groups you're serving are enough to start. I'll build the equipment and surfacing scope around it.
Call 201-670-4000 or email jays@njswingsets.com. Either one reaches me.
Is It Too Late to Apply This Year?
The February 27, 2026 deadline is confirmed and past. Next round's dates aren't published as of this writing, so treat the schedule below as the pattern to plan against, not a promise. Check the Green Acres program site for the official announcement.
| When | What to be doing |
|---|---|
| Right now | Confirm eligibility first: whether Green Acres funded this facility in the last 20 years (waiver form if so), and whether you're carrying three or more open projects (five for a county) |
| Now through September | Site assessment, age groups and capacity, community survey or meeting on the calendar |
| September to October | Equipment scope and itemized cost estimate. Confirm where your match is coming from. |
| November to December | Green Acres information sessions ran Nov 17, Nov 18, Dec 3 and Dec 17 last cycle. Attend one. |
| January to February | Assemble the package. Support letters, resolutions, documentation. |
| Late February | Submit. Last cycle's deadline was the 27th |
Grant-funded playground projects tend to run 12 to 24 months from application to opening day. Award decisions, design review, procurement, an 8 to 16 week equipment lead time, then construction. A town that applies in February is realistically cutting a ribbon the following year, sometimes the year after. If your equipment is genuinely unsafe, don't wait on a grant cycle to address it.
Where Does the Federal Money Fit?
The June announcement broke down as $327 million in formula grants to states and $134 million in competitive grants, spread across all 50 states, the territories, and Washington D.C. Every dollar carries at least a 1:1 match, which puts total spending north of $900 million. Formula money is distributed mainly by population.
For your purposes that federal money is Green Acres money. You don't apply to Washington. DEP Green Acres is the lead agency for Land and Water Conservation Fund grants in New Jersey, and anything you submit routes through them before it ever reaches the National Park Service.
There's a second federal track with much bigger individual awards: the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program, up to $125 million nationally for urban communities with limited park access. Awards run from $300,000 to $15 million against a 50% non-federal match. Eligibility is narrower than regular Green Acres: your project has to sit in a census-designated urban area of 25,000 or more people, and the program prioritizes low-income communities and park deserts.
One more thing about the federal track: it reimburses. You fund the work and get paid back. That's a cash-flow question for your CFO (and one better asked in August than in March), not a reason to skip it.
Questions Towns Ask Us
We've never applied for a grant before. Are we eligible?
Yes. As of the 2026 round, every park development project is eligible for a minimum 25% grant, including those sponsored by standard municipalities. DEP's announcement put the number of towns previously limited to loans at 402. First-time applicants are eligible on the same terms as everyone else, though the twelve disqualifiers still apply.
How much of the cost would Green Acres actually cover?
A standard municipality gets 25%, a non-Urban Aid county 50%, and a project located in an Urban Aid municipality 75%. Building a completely inclusive playground, or siting it in an overburdened community, adds 25 percentage points, reaching 100% in an Urban Aid municipality, where no match is required. Awards are capped, historically $600,000 to $700,000 for a standard municipality.
Do we need an equipment quote before we apply?
The application requires a project description, concept plan, and cost estimate, so the equipment is selected and priced before submission. Awards are capped and a project needing a later funding round to finish is deemed ineligible, so the estimate determines whether the design qualifies.
If we get a quote, are we locked into that vendor?
No. A quote supports your application's cost estimate. Purchasing happens later under whatever procurement path your town uses: public bidding, cooperative purchasing, or state contract.
We keep hearing about Jake's Law. Is that still a thing?
Jake's Law, signed in 2018, is why New Jersey has a legal definition of a completely inclusive playground. It's named for Jacob "Jake" Cummings-Nasto, a Cherry Hill toddler whose family founded Build Jake's Place. The Jake's Law Pilot funding program has ended. Inclusive playgrounds now get a 25-point premium through Green Acres park development instead. Qualifying is all-or-nothing: you have to meet every DCA requirement, including fencing, 20% shading and unitary surfacing. A family or assisted-use restroom is required only if restrooms already serve the site. DCA doesn't make you build new ones.
Can we stack Green Acres with our county open space money?
Partly. Capital or bond funds, county open space money, private and corporate donations, foundation grants, and Green Acres loans all count as match. Another Green Acres award does not, and neither does other Garden State Preservation Trust funding. Confirm your specific combination with Green Acres before budgeting on it.
If we get the grant, when would kids actually be playing on it?
Plan on 12 to 24 months from application to opening. That covers the award decision, design review, procurement, an 8 to 16 week equipment lead time, and construction. Applying in February usually means a ribbon-cutting the following year.
- Every NJ municipality now qualifies for at least a 25% park development grant — 402 towns were loan-only before the 2026 change
- A Completely Inclusive Playground or an overburdened-community location adds 25 percentage points. In an Urban Aid municipality that reaches 100% grant funding, and projects funded at 100% require no match.
- Community engagement during planning is a hard eligibility requirement: a survey or meeting, advertised and documented. The public hearing does not count toward it.
- A CIP is a DCA regulatory checklist, not a design philosophy: fencing, 20% shading, unitary surfacing around the equipment and connecting paths, quiet play areas, and a family restroom if restrooms already serve the site. Miss one required element and the premium is gone.
- The premium only applies if the whole application is limited to the inclusive playground and its DCA-required improvements. Bundle it with unrelated park work and the entire application drops to the normal ratio.
- Replacing a facility Green Acres funded within the last 20 years is ineligible without a waiver form filed by the deadline. Check the park's funding history first
- Awards are capped, historically $600,000 to $700,000 for a standard municipality. A project needing a later funding round to finish is deemed ineligible, so the cost estimate decides whether your design qualifies.
- The $461 million in federal Land and Water Conservation Fund money announced in June reaches NJ towns through DEP Green Acres, not directly from Washington
- Next round's dates aren't published yet. Last cycle: information sessions from mid-November, deadline February 27.
Still sizing up whether this is worth chasing?
Tell me the site, the age groups, and what you're replacing. I'll come back with an itemized equipment and surfacing scope your application can use, plus my read on whether the inclusive-playground premium makes sense for your situation.
Request a Free QuoteOr just call me: 201-670-4000
About Jay Samolowicz
Owner, NJ Swingsets & Playgrounds
CPSI #59746-1226 • RISC Certified • NPCAI Member • ACR Member
I started NJ Swingsets & Playgrounds in 2013 and I've been working on New Jersey playgrounds ever since: residential at first, then schools, daycares, churches, and municipal parks. I'm a Certified Playground Safety Inspector and my crews are RISC certified, working out of our showroom in Midland Park. I got certified, built relationships with the right manufacturers, and figured the rest out along the way.