New York Cut Its Community Center Renovation Pool From $35 Million to $5 Million and Raised the Passing Score to 85. NY BRICKS Round 2 Is a Different Program.

Read the press release and NY BRICKS Round 2 looks like a smaller version of Round 1. Same program, same $250,000-to-$15,000,000 award band, same 20 percent match, same priority for underserved communities — just $75 million instead of $100 million.

Read the RFA and it is a different competition.

The Request for Applications that the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) posted on August 31, 2026 changes four things that decide who wins. Applications open November 2 and close at 3:00 p.m. on December 7, 2026. Awards land no earlier than February 26, 2027.

If your organization runs a community center in New York and you were planning to reuse the application you filed last year, the four changes below are the ones that will disqualify you.

The renovation pool lost 86 percent of its money

NY BRICKS splits its funding into three Priority Levels, and applicants must pick one at the outset based on what the project is and how much they are asking for. Here is what moved between rounds:

Priority 1 held steady in absolute dollars even as the total shrank by a quarter — it is now 60 percent of the program instead of 45 percent. Priority 2 grew. The entire $25 million reduction, and then some, came out of renovation.

Five million dollars, against a $250,000 floor, funds somewhere between one and twenty renovation grants statewide. In Round 1, the renovation lane was the accessible one: smaller asks, existing buildings, no land to assemble. It was where a mid-sized nonprofit with a tired 1970s facility had a realistic path. That lane is now the narrowest of the three.

The state said what it wanted plainly in both RFAs — "The State's priority is to provide funds to create new Community Centers statewide" — but in Round 1 it hedged that priority with a $35 million renovation allocation. Round 2 removes the hedge.

There is one release valve. Residual funds left unspent within any Priority Level roll into the Base Pool, and Base Pool awards go to the next-highest-scoring applications across all levels. A strong renovation application that misses the Priority 3 cut can still be funded from the Base Pool. But it is competing there against new-construction applications from Priority 1 and 2 that were themselves strong enough to be near the line — and no partial grants are awarded, so a Base Pool award has to be fully fundable out of what is left.

The passing score went from 70 to 85

This is the change most likely to be missed, because it lives in a bullet point in Section Three.

Scoring is 100 points across three steps. Step One is a pass/fail eligibility review. Step Two awards up to 40 points for Community Need and Project Planning. Step Three awards up to 60 more for Project Impact and Project Viability.

In Round 1, an application needed 20 or more points in Step Two to advance, and a total of 70 to be considered for an award.

In Round 2, the Step Two threshold is 31 or more, and the minimum total score is 85.

Work through what 31 points in Step Two actually requires. Community Need is worth up to 30, scored entirely off a state map layer: up to 20 points from the poverty rate in your project location's ZIP Code Tabulation Area, plus 5 if the census tract is a designated Disadvantaged Community, plus 5 if it is an ESD Distressed Community. Those points are a function of your address. You cannot write your way into them.

Project Planning is worth up to 20, and it is a hard tier ladder based on how far along your design is:

• 20 points — Construction Documents, plus a signed letter from the designer of record
• 10 points — Design Development Documents, plus the letter
• 5 points — Schematic Design Documents, plus the letter
• 0 points — anything general, incomplete, or not tied to this specific project

An applicant in a moderately poor ZCTA — say 18 points on Community Need, no DAC, no ESD designation — needs 13 points from Project Planning to clear 31. The ladder does not offer 13. It offers 5, 10, or 20. That applicant must arrive with Construction Documents or be eliminated before a human reviewer ever reads their narrative.

And clearing 31 only earns the right to be scored. Reaching 85 means capturing roughly 54 of the 60 available points in Step Three. Project Impact is 20 questions scored 0 or 1 each. Project Viability is 40 points, weighted overwhelmingly toward money: 8 points for construction readiness, 10 for a project budget, and 22 for committed funding sources.

The RFA is explicit about what "committed" excludes: "Pledges or award letters with unsatisfied contingencies, pending loan applications, and other non-final commitments will not be considered secured funding for evaluation purposes."

Twenty-two of 100 points go to money already in hand or unconditionally promised. That is the single largest scoring category in the program, and it is not a writing exercise.

Acquisition is off the table

Round 1's eligible-project language read "acquisition, design, construction, major renovation, and equipping of a Community Center." Round 2 drops the first word. Section 4.3 states it directly — "The NY BRICKS Grant may not be used to acquire real property" — and Section 4.4 lists "Acquisition of real property" among the ineligible uses.

Governor Hochul's December 2025 announcement of the Round 1 awards specifically described the $100 million as supporting "design, construction, renovation, and land acquisition." Organizations that watched Round 1 fund a purchase and planned accordingly need to restructure now, not in November.

Site control is still required to apply, and the RFA still accommodates leased locations — but the lease must run at least ten years from the application date, the full agreement including all exhibits and riders must be attached, and a dated, signed letter from the landlord granting permission for the work must accompany it. Any one of those missing means the application "will not be deemed an Eligible Application." Nonprofits that own their site must produce a deed in the applicant organization's exact legal name; a mismatch without a satisfactory written explanation is fatal at Step One.

The other date that moved: reimbursable costs. Round 1 excluded costs incurred on or before April 1, 2025. Round 2 excludes costs incurred on or before April 1, 2026.

Prequalification is the trap door

Not-for-profit applicants must hold approved Prequalification status in the Statewide Financial System before submitting. Not in review. Not in progress. Approved.

Round 2's RFA adds a warning that reads like it was written from Round 1's casualty list: "once any Prequalification Application is opened, it should be completed and submitted as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the status may be reflected as 'In Review' or 'Application in Progress' and will not be considered Prequalified for purposes of this Funding Opportunity, EVEN IF the organization had previously been in Prequalified status."

An organization that was prequalified, opened a routine document update in October, and left it sitting is not prequalified on December 7. The RFA notes the process "may take several weeks" and requires nine documents: IRS determination letter, incorporation or charter documents, the IRS 990, the NYS CHAR 500, bylaws, board profile, executive leadership resumes, financial statements, and an org chart.

There are also communication restrictions with teeth. Under State Finance Law §§ 139-j and 139-k, every question must go through a single SurveyMonkey form. Contacting DASNY, OPRHP, or other state personnel about this procurement outside that channel "may disqualify the Applicant and affect future procurements with governmental entities in the State of New York."

What the calendar actually gives you

Question period opened August 31. Substantive questions submitted before September 7 get addressed in the applicant webinar video, which posts by September 14. All questions close at 3:00 p.m. on September 30; answers post October 26. The portal opens November 2.

That sequence means the useful work happens in September, not November. An organization that will need Construction Documents by December 7 has roughly fourteen weeks to get a design professional to that stage, and the RFA further notes that the most competitive budgets are "prepared by a design professional within the past six months."

Round 1 drew awards ranging from $260,000 to $15 million across 22 counties, benefiting close to 400,000 New Yorkers, with more than 90 percent of funding going to underserved communities. The Round 2 underserved set-aside holds at half the pot — not less than $37.5 million of $75 million — and the definition is unchanged: 20 or more points on the Community Need worksheet.

The honest read on Round 2 is that New York has narrowed the program to shovel-ready new construction in high-poverty locations by organizations that have already raised most of their capital. The definition of a community center also tightened in a way worth checking against your own facility: it explicitly excludes standalone libraries, schools, gyms, daycare facilities, houses of worship, food pantries, and health care facilities.

Everyone else should look hard at the September 30 question deadline and use it — a specific, well-framed question about whether your project structure qualifies is free, and the answer arrives October 26, six weeks before you have to commit. When you're mapping a capital campaign against a scoring rubric this steep, tools like Granted can help you pressure-test the fit before you spend a design retainer chasing points you cannot reach.