Florence Township and Bordentown Township are on target to receive money to improve local parks as part of a recent Burlington County grant.
The Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders released an announcement on Jan. 23 that Florence Township and Bordentown Township were among 24 municipalities in the county to receive funding as part of a park grant offered by the Burlington officials.
Freeholders said that funding provided through the grant is aimed to develop or improve outdoor recreational facilities and preserve open space.
As part of the grant, officials announced that improvements are planned for Northern Community Park on Groveville Road in Bordentown Township. A restroom/storage building is planned for Veterans Park in Florence as well as a fishing pier, path lighting and a gazebo at John A. Roebling Memorial Park. Trail connections at Broad and West 6th Street in Florence are planned as well, officials said.
“I am so glad to begin my tenure working for the residents of Burlington County on such a high note,” Freeholder Linda Hynes, liaison to the County Department of Resource Conversation, said in a statement. “As a councilwoman in Westampton Township, I saw the great benefit these grants provide to towns, providing funding for improvements which improve the quality of life for residents and preserve open spaces.”
Officials said that funding is used to assist towns in Burlington County to develop or improve parks for outdoor active recreation. All 40 municipalities were eligible to apply for funding up to $250,000 as part of the county’s 2019 Municipal Park Development Grants, according to officials. Since 2017, Burlington County Freeholders have not awarded municipal park grants.
The grant program is funded through Burlington County’s dedicated Open Space, Recreation, Farmland and Historic Preservation Trust Fund, officials said. No municipal cost share or “match” is required to receive this grant funding, but the funding is exclusively for hard costs such as construction and repair of facilities, and is not for the purchase of equipment or for operational and maintenance costs, according to county officials. Funds may be applied to the acquisition of recreational land or local cost share for farmland preservation, officials said.
“I am excited to report that this year twenty-four municipalities received funding, totaling $3.65 million in grants,” Hynes said. “In this round of funding, we will see new walking trails, reconstructed basketball courts, new softball fields, a fishing pier and an amphitheater among many other wonderful projects. We are proud of the municipal park grants program and are looking forward to having families enjoy these projects in their towns.”
In addition to the improvements planned for Northern Community Park through the county grant, Bordentown Township officials said last year that they planned to develop more recreational facilities at the park.
Township officials explained that they met with representatives from several youth sports organizations regarding the upgrades that are needed to the township’s parks and recreational facilities, and reported that they were working with Little League baseball and softball teams on a new batting cage, with the possibility of increasing and improving the current fields at the Groveville Road location.
Meanwhile, several locations in Florence are also planned to benefit from the county as well. The Roebling Museum in Florence is planned to become a part of a county-wide project when county officials held a groundbreaking ceremony in June 2019 at Crystal Lake Park in Mansfield Township for the county’s second section of the Delaware River Heritage Trail project.
A portion of the Delaware River Heritage Trail will be a 5.5-mile trail that is planned to connect an existing trail in Fieldsboro to the Roebling Museum. The trail is also planned to cross Route 130 and travel through Crystal Lake Park, continue through the Village of Hedding to the abandoned Kinkora Railroad line, pass under Route 130 and cross the NJ Transit Rail Line before ending at the Roebling Museum.
According to information released by the county, the trail project construction will begin in June and will take approximately one year to complete. Eventually, county officials said they would like to connect this trail to the Palmyra Cove Nature Center, making the county’s portion of the Delaware River Heritage Trail approximately 30 miles of trails.
The Delaware River Heritage Trail will also be part of the Circuit Trails regional trail network. When complete, the Circuit Trails is planned to be a network of approximate 800 miles of multi-use trails connecting urban, suburban and rural communities in nine counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The Circuit Trails Coalition is a collaboration of more than 65 non-profit agencies and foundations working to advance completion of the trail network. Currently, more than 300 miles of trails have been constructed and are open for use through the Circuit Trails network.
According to the county officials, the trail in Roebling is one of five trail projects that will add more than 18 miles of trails to the regional trail network by 2025. The Kinkora Trail was completed in 2016 and four trail projects are now in various stages of development.
