Longport's Three New Parks Almost Didn't Cost the Town a Dime

On a stormy Friday afternoon last December, Joann McGuire and James Henry Desselaers got married in a gazebo on 22nd Avenue. The forecast called for rain straight through the ceremony. Instead, the clouds broke at exactly 1 p.m., right as Mayor Patrick Armstrong began officiating, in the park built on the two lots where the bride's late neighbor Dorothy McGee once lived. It was the first wedding ever held at Dorothy McGee Park, and it happened less than six months after the park itself opened.

That gazebo is one-third of a story most residents have only seen in pieces: a groundbreaking here, a ribbon-cutting there, a Facebook post about a new fountain. Strung together, the pieces say something sharper than "Longport got some new parks." In just over a year, this borough of under 900 year-round residents added three separate public green spaces to a half-square-mile island where, as local reporting on the McGee dedication put it, nearly every square inch had already been built on. And the borough's own tax levy barely touched any of it.

Three Parks, Three Different Wallets

Each park got built with a different kind of money, and the differences explain how a town this small pulled off three capital projects at once without the usual budget fight.

Dorothy McGee Park on 22nd Avenue exists because Dorothy Sanders McGee, the borough's school board secretary for more than twenty years, bequeathed two beach-block lots to Longport when she died in November 2023. Her will asked for a gazebo like the one on 35th Street, a low fence, and enough flowers and benches to make the space feel like rest rather than restriction. The borough covered part of the roughly $140,000 build with a New Jersey Local Recreation Grant, and when neighbors heard about the gift, a committee co-chaired by Jocelyn Agnellini Allison and Ben Kirshner raised the rest to bring in landscaper Jamie Lloyd. No tax increase was ever on the table because the land came in at zero cost and the construction leaned on a grant and private donations from day one.

Point Park, at the very end of Atlantic Avenue, moved forward after a gift from the Kessler Family Trust got the project rolling. The borough's Board of Commissioners then awarded a $505,800 contract to L. Feriozzi Concrete Co. to rebuild the retaining wall, funded through a mix of private donations, a $71,000 state recreation grant, and a previously approved recreation bond. That bond is the one piece of the trilogy that touches the municipal ledger, and even there, private money did the heavy lifting first.

Beach Terrace Park, tucked along the bulkhead between 15th and 16th avenues, is the purest case. Residents of the Seaview and Costa Videre condominiums formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Beach Terrace Park Inc., raised the full $175,000 construction cost themselves, and signed a license agreement to maintain the park in perpetuity. The borough owns the land and supplies water and electricity. Beach Terrace Park Inc. handles literally everything else, forever, which means this one adds green space to town without adding a maintenance line to anyone's tax bill going forward.

Look at the completion dates again. McGee Park opened July 3, 2025. Beach Terrace Park opened July 4, 2026, almost exactly a year and a day later, with Point Park's ribbon-cutting landing in between on June 13. Mayor Armstrong told the crowd at the McGee ribbon-cutting, "This team is finished here, but we are going to take this energy and continue with two more parks." He kept the promise inside a calendar year.

What Each One Actually Feels Like

The three don't feel alike, and that's on purpose. Landscaper Jamie Lloyd, who designed all three, put it simply: each park will have its own personality, shaped by whichever environment surrounds it.

Dorothy McGee Park sits on the beach block, behind a fence no higher than three feet, with a gazebo, flowers, and the golden-colored brick sidewalk the borough preserved and patched with bricks salvaged from the original lot. There's no parking here and never will be. McGee's estate specifically asked that the space stay a place to sit, not a destination people drive to, and the borough held to that even when a commissioner raised early concerns about the roughly $125 a year in lost tax revenue from taking two $1.7 million lots off the rolls.

Point Park is the loudest of the three, in the best way. A new concrete retaining wall and a rebuilt turnaround replaced crumbling infrastructure at the literal end of the island, where Atlantic Avenue runs out and the bay, the ocean, and the northern tip of Ocean City all come into view at once. A newly installed interpretive sign explains why Longport's municipal boundary actually begins at 11th Avenue, tracing back through storms and shifting land that reshaped this stretch of shoreline over the decades. Walk the red brick path to the fishing jetty and you'll pass a Van Duyne surf boat filled with flowers, plus a water fountain built for both people and dogs, something residents had specifically asked for in the months before it was installed. Nine parking spots sit on site, with more available along Atlantic Avenue, and the park is open daily from dawn until dusk.

Beach Terrace Park is the quietest. It occupies a narrow lot along the bulkhead that once held a boardwalk, built in 1919 and later destroyed by the Great Atlantic Hurricane. For decades afterward it sat as a barren strip between the bulkhead and the sidewalk. Now it holds a meandering paver walkway, a small Zen garden, four benches, and a founders plaque acknowledging the residents who paid for it. There's no vehicle access and none intended. This is a walking park, built for the slow version of a Longport evening rather than the fast one.

The Practical Stuff

If you're planning to actually use these spaces rather than just admire them from a distance, a few details matter:

• McGee Park has no on-site parking under any circumstances, so plan to walk or bike from wherever you're staying on 22nd Avenue.
• Point Park's nine spaces fill up fast at sunset, especially on clear evenings, and overflow parking runs along Atlantic Avenue itself.
• Beach Terrace Park is pedestrian-only. There's no lot at all, which keeps the bulkhead quiet but means you're walking in from either 15th or 16th.
• Point Park's hours are dawn to dusk, posted at the site. The other two don't carry formal posted hours, though both sit inside residential blocks where the same courtesy applies.

A Loop Worth Knowing

Put the three together and they trace a rough line down the spine of the island. Start at McGee Park on 22nd Avenue, walk or bike south along Atlantic, stop at Beach Terrace Park between 15th and 16th for the Zen garden, and finish at Point Park at 11th Avenue in time for sunset over the bay. It's not a long stretch on a barrier island barely half a square mile wide, but it's a genuinely new one. A year ago, two of these three stops were either a vacant beach-block lot, a crumbling seawall, or a barren strip nobody stopped to look at twice.

What makes the trilogy worth understanding, not just visiting, is the funding pattern underneath it. A will, a family trust, and a condo association's nonprofit did more to reshape Longport's public space this year than any borough budget line did on its own. That's not a coincidence in a town this small and this valuable. It's how things get built here when the parcels are worth millions and the year-round population is smaller than a single Ocean City block.

If you're already walking these three parks on a regular rotation, you already know the town better than most write-ups give you credit for. If you're new to noticing them, that loop from 22nd Avenue down to the Point is as good an introduction to Longport's actual rhythm as anything else on the island.

For more on what's happening around Longport and the rest of Absecon Island, Daniel Rallo keeps a close eye on the towns he works in every day. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's changing downbeach.