New York's First Open Space Conservation Grants: $25.17M, 14 Land Deals, and 73% Downstate. What Land Trusts and Towns Should Do Before Round Two

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the first awards from its new Open Space Conservation Grant Program (OSCGP): $25.17 million for 14 land-acquisition projects. The money comes from the 2022 Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act and the state's Environmental Protection Fund. The program's total allocation is $100 million, and DEC says "additional funding rounds are anticipated."

Few public programs work like this one. It pays for buying land outright, requires no local match, offers up to $3.5 million per project and is open to land trusts, municipalities and Indian Nations. About three-quarters of the allocation is still unspent. For any New York land trust or town with a willing seller, preparing for Round Two is worth starting now.

Round One awards

DEC listed every grantee by region:

The awards total $25,170,956. The average award is about $1.8 million.

Pattern 1: land prices drove the money downstate

Grouped by region, the awards were uneven:

• Mid-Hudson: four awards, $8.18 million
• Long Island: three awards, $8.00 million
• Capital Region: two awards, $4.33 million
• New York City: one award, $2.15 million
• Western New York: three awards, $1.84 million
• Southern Tier: one award, $0.67 million

Long Island, the Mid-Hudson Valley and New York City together received $18.33 million, or about 73 percent of Round One. All three awards at the $3.5 million cap went to Columbia County, Long Island's North Shore and the Town of Warwick in Orange County, all in high-cost parts of eastern New York.

That pattern mostly reflects land prices, not regional preference. A $3.5 million award might protect 50 acres on Long Island and several hundred in Western New York. The program funds dollars, not acres, so expensive markets use more of it.

Four regions received no awards: the North Country, Central New York, the Finger Lakes and the Mohawk Valley. DEC has not said whether few eligible applications came from those regions or whether the ones submitted did not score well. Either way, it is an opportunity. If DEC wants to show statewide reach toward its 30x30 goal, a strong upstate application in Round Two may face less competition from its own region.

Pattern 2: small and municipal applicants won

Round One did not go only to large land trusts:

• Three towns (Brookhaven, Warwick and Wappinger) won $7.62 million, about 30 percent of the round.
• Small volunteer-run groups won: Friends of Buttonhook Forest, Buffalo Bat Habitat and Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy. Chautauqua's $126,950 award is close to the program's $50,000 minimum.
• A Cornell Cooperative Extension office (Tompkins County) won. That shows the "not-for-profit" category reaches beyond traditional land trusts.
• The Bronx Land Trust won $2.15 million. That fits the Bond Act's listed priority of community gardens in urban areas and DEC's target of directing at least 40 percent of benefits to disadvantaged communities.

Implication: A small applicant can compete if it has a well-defined parcel, a willing seller and a clear priority resource. The program does not require a large staff or experience with similar grants.

The rules that matter

From DEC's program page and the November 2025 launch announcement:

• Eligible applicants: municipalities, not-for-profit organizations and Indian Nations or Tribes.
• Eligible projects: land purchases only, for permanent conservation. Projects must align with the New York State Open Space Conservation Plan and include at least one of seven Bond Act priority resources:
  1. Ecological, habitat, recreational or scenic value
  2. Drinking-water supply protection
  3. Flood control or flood mitigation
  4. Floodplain status
  5. Habitat connectivity, existing or potential
  6. Open space for public use and enjoyment
  7. Community gardens in urban areas
• Award range: $50,000 to $3,500,000, with no match required.
• Eligible costs: purchase price, appraisals, surveys and boundary marking, title work, legal fees, environmental assessments and site improvements for recreational access. Land trusts may also include conservation defense insurance premiums.
• Payment: installments as specific stages of the acquisition are completed, not one lump sum up front.
• Appraisals: must follow DEC's appraisal standards, which DEC updated in July 2025.
• Public access: encouraged, though not required on the program page.

A memorandum of agreement with the Attorney General's office, announced at the program's launch, is meant to simplify legal review of both fee purchases and conservation easements. Ask DEC before assuming easement-only deals qualify, because the program page describes eligible projects as land purchases.

The schedule ran long

Round One's timeline is the best guide to Round Two:

• November 19, 2025: Governor Hochul announced the program, with $25 million available
• December 3, 2025: applicant webinar
• February 18, 2026: original deadline, later extended to April 15, 2026
• May 2026: original target for awards
• October 2026: awards announced

So from launch to award took about eleven months, and DEC announced awards about five months after its target. Land deals can be hurt by delays like that. A seller who agreed in early 2026 might have had to wait most of the year for an answer. Applicants should negotiate option agreements or purchase contracts long enough to cover a comparable timeline in Round Two, ideally 12 to 18 months, or arrange bridge financing from a revolving loan fund or partner organization.

How to prepare for Round Two now

No Round Two request for applications has been posted. If DEC follows the Round One schedule, a late-fall or winter release is plausible, but that is our estimate, not DEC's. These steps are worth taking regardless of timing:

1. Register and prequalify now. All applicants must register in the Statewide Financial System (SFS). Not-for-profits must also prequalify before the deadline, or DEC will not review the application. DEC told Round One applicants to start early, and prequalification is the step most often missed. It requires current organizational documents, financial statements and board information, so do it before you need it.
2. Secure your parcel. Have a willing seller, a signed option or letter of intent, a preliminary title review and a sense of value. Order the full appraisal, which must meet DEC's July 2025 standards, as close to submission as your budget allows. An application backed by a signed agreement is more credible than one describing a parcel you hope to buy.
3. Name your priority resources explicitly. Connect the parcel to as many of the seven Bond Act resources as it actually has, such as habitat connectivity plus floodplain status plus public access. Then tie it to the regional priorities in the 30x30 conservation strategies and methodology that DEC and the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation finalized in May 2026. Applications that match the state's own mapping help DEC show progress toward 30x30.
4. Highlight disadvantaged-community benefits where they exist. With a 40 percent benefits target, a parcel in or serving a state-designated disadvantaged community, whether an urban garden, a riverfront park or a flood buffer upstream of a vulnerable neighborhood, has an advantage.
5. Use the $3.5 million cap as part of a funding stack. For expensive deals, combine OSCGP with other sources: municipal open-space bond or community preservation funds, the Land Trust Alliance-administered New York State Conservation Partnership Program for organizational capacity and transaction costs, private foundations and bargain-sale gifts from the seller. Because OSCGP has no match requirement, it can go to the largest part of the price while other funds cover the rest.
6. Budget all eligible transaction costs. Survey, title, legal, environmental assessment and access improvements are reimbursable. Many first-time applicants pay these out of pocket when they could have included them in the request.

Where this fits in New York's funding picture

The OSCGP is one of several Bond Act programs now distributing money. For towns, it complements infrastructure funding such as the County Infrastructure Grant Program's third round. Unlike most of those programs, it requires no match. That makes it especially useful for small towns and volunteer-run land trusts, which usually cannot raise matching funds.

About $75 million of the $100 million allocation is left, so the program could fund several more rounds the size of Round One. Round One shows that small applicants and towns can win, that four upstate regions have no projects yet and that slow award timelines are the main practical risk. The applicants best placed for Round Two will have finished prequalification and secured a seller before the request for applications is posted.

If your land trust or town is preparing an Open Space Conservation Grant application, from the priority-resource narrative to the acquisition budget, Granted can help you draft it and check it against DEC's criteria.