The New Jersey State Park System administers more than four dozen parks, forests and recreation areas, and more than 50 historic sites and districts. Together, these special places host more than 17 million visitors annually. But in the nation’s most heavily urbanized state, the only State-managed and operated urban park is Liberty State Park. To put more State parks in urban areas, the State hosted a two-stage national design competition for new parks at Trenton and Paterson in 2005-2006.
On October 30, 2006, Governor Jon S. Corzine announced that Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC, had won the Trenton design competition. The Philadelphia-based firm works in planning, urban design, landscape architecture and architecture for clients around the world. The WRT design team and subconsultants began work on a Master Plan for the New Jersey Capital Park in January, 2007. Working with a Steering Committee of local stakeholders, WRT produced a draft master plan in the form of two documents ~ a 41-page Executive Summary and a 150-page Master Plan ~ in August. After stakeholder comments, those documents were posted to this website November 8. A public presentation of the draft Master Plan took place the following week, and public comments were solicited online for a month after posting. The Master Plan was accepted by DEP in January, 2008.
The Executive Summary of the Master Plan* is available here.
The full Master Plan, divided into 4 chapters, is available here.
A. Introduction*
B. Chapter 1: Vision*
C. Chapter 2: Reality*
D. Chapter 3: Solutions*
E. Chapter 4: Action*
Comments on the Master Plan should be addressed to: trentonsp@dep.state.nj.us