The National Park Service (NPS) has announced the opening of the sixth Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) application round. Established in 2014, the ORLP is a nationally competitive grant program, funded through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), that focuses on communities with little to no access to outdoor recreation opportunities in urban areas. In this round, NPS has $192 million available for park projects that create new outdoor recreation spaces, reinvigorate existing parks, or form connections between people and the outdoors in economically underserved communities.
The Department of Interior has made a few changes to the program for this application round. They include:
- Decreasing the city size cap from 50,000 to 30,000 residents;
- Removing the requirement for cities to be in a Census-designated Urban Area boundary;
- Increasing the maximum grant amount from $5 million to $10 million; and
- Removing the pre-application that states were required to submit.
Project sponsors must match the grant award 1:1 with non-federal dollars.
Applications are being accepted in Grants.gov through May 31, 2023, with an early submission deadline of January 31, 2023 for those that have application requirements completed. Interested jurisdictions should contact their state lead agency for LWCF. Additional details about ORLP, contacts, and application information are available on the National Park Service's Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program page.
City Parks Alliance will be hosting an ORLP informational webinar in September. Be on the lookout for an upcoming email with that information.
If you have questions regarding the ORLP program, you may contact NPS directly. Ginger Carter is the lead ORLP staffer.
Ginger Carter
Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) Program Lead
National Park Service
State and Local Assistance Programs
Ginger_Carter@nps.gov
Or feel free to contact City Parks Alliance's Advocacy Director Julie Waterman at jwaterman@cityparksalliance.org.
------------------------------
Brandon Taylor
Assistant Professor
California State Univeristy, Fresno
brtaylor@csufresno.edu------------------------------