In January 2026, State Sen. Nick Miller announced that Salisbury Township had landed $3 million in state grant funding toward a long-planned overhaul of William H. Laubach Memorial Park. If you caught that news and assumed the fences would go up by summer, you're not alone, and you're also getting ahead of the township's own timeline. Officials told a reporter before their January 22, 2026 meeting that construction on the Laubach project might not begin until 2027. As of this writing, seven months later, the park still looks the way it always has.
That gap between "the grant came through" and "anything actually changes at the park" is the real story here, and it's been the pattern at Laubach since before most residents started paying attention. If you use this park, coach at it, or just walk past it on your way somewhere else, the useful thing to know isn't the headline dollar figure. It's how the township has been chasing this money for the better part of a decade, in pieces, and what still has to fall into place before the ballfields you know today look any different.
A decade of asking
The Laubach Park redevelopment traces back to a nearly 100-page master plan for Laubach and the neighboring Franko Farm Recreation Area, adopted by the township in January 2017 after public input meetings the year before. Before any of that plan could move, though, the township had to fix a drainage problem: stormwater running through Lehigh Avenue had been flooding parts of Laubach used by the Salisbury Youth Association, and a roughly $680,000 stormwater project finally wrapped in August 2023, clearing the way for the park work to actually start.
By March 2024, township officials were sketching a rough schedule: planning through 2024, bids in 2025, construction closure in 2026, reopening in 2027. The cost estimate at that point was described only as "upward of $1.5 million." That 2026 closure never happened. A year after the schedule was sketched, with a fuller design in hand, the cost estimate had grown considerably and the timeline had already slipped past it.
Here's how the funding has actually arrived, piece by piece:
| When | What happened | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| January 2017 | Township adopts the Laubach Park and Franko Farm master plan | n/a |
| August 2023 | Lehigh Avenue stormwater project completes | about $680,000 |
| April 2025 | Township applies for a DCNR development grant | $3,401,723 requested |
| November 2025 | Township applies for the maximum Local Share Account grant | $1,000,000 requested |
| January 2026 | DCNR grant is confirmed, below the amount requested | $3,000,000 awarded |
| February 2026 | Township applies for two more targeted grants, for the pond, boardwalk, and Trout Creek streambank | $550,000 requested |
Notice the gap in that January 2026 row. The township asked DCNR for $3,401,723 and received $3 million, a shortfall of roughly $400,000 on the marquee grant alone. Meanwhile the total project cost has kept climbing: from that early "upward of $1.5 million" guess in 2024, to a $6.2 to $6.6 million sketch-plan estimate by March 2025, to $6.8 million by the time Lehigh Valley Press reported on the confirmed grant in early February 2026. Getting a big check doesn't close the gap. It just changes what's still owed.
That's by design, not accident. Back in March 2025, when the township was preparing its DCNR application, then-township manager Cathy Bonaskiewich told commissioners, "You could apply for successive grants." Salisbury has been doing exactly that ever since, stacking a DCNR award on top of a pending Local Share Account request on top of two more Commonwealth Financing Authority grants filed in February. Any single grant announcement, including the $3 million one, is a chapter, not the ending.
A four-and-a-half-inch reason for delay
Even with money lined up, the project has an unresolved wrinkle that has nothing to do with budgets. According to Township Manager Cathy Gorman, a required Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory screening "uncovered potential bog turtle habitat" in Laubach Park. The bog turtle is one of the smallest turtle species in the world and the smallest in North America, with adults topping out around 4.5 inches, and it's listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This isn't a hypothetical concern in the Lehigh Valley. Bog turtle habitat found in Saucon Creek near what was then Saucon Valley Road, now Center Valley Parkway, and Route 309 is reported to have been a factor in how Interstate 78 was ultimately aligned through Upper Saucon Township. A small, protected turtle has real leverage over big infrastructure decisions in this part of the county. Gorman said the township will need to hire a specialist firm to survey Laubach for potential habitat before the pond and boardwalk work can proceed, which is one more step that has to clear before the 2027 target date means anything firm.
The pond has a stricter rule than most people realize
Part of why the township is being careful here is what that pond actually is. The spring-fed pond in the northwest corner of Laubach forms the headwaters of Trout Creek, which the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has designated a High Quality Cold Water Fishery. Gorman put it plainly to commissioners at the February 12, 2026 meeting, when the board voted 5-0 to approve a $300,000 grant application for streambank stabilization along that stretch:
"This gains part of the established flow. It is the headwaters of Trout Creek."
At the same meeting, the board also approved a separate $250,000 application specifically for constructing a pond and boardwalk. Gorman noted the township had to scale that request down from an earlier version. "We were asked to get it down to $600,000," she said. "We took out the pond and wetlands, which qualified for the separate grant application."
Here's the part most residents don't know. Since 1988, and as amended in 1991, it has technically been unlawful for anyone over the age of 15 to fish in that pond at all, with one exception: a single day each year, set aside for a senior citizens' fishing contest open to anyone 62 and older. Everyone in between, roughly ages 16 to 61, has been shut out of the pond by township ordinance for nearly four decades. Whether a brand-new fishing platform, funded specifically to make the pond more accessible, prompts the township to revisit that rule is an open question worth watching the next time this project comes up at a commissioners' meeting.
What's already good about this corner of the township
None of this construction timeline changes what's already here right now, and Laubach isn't the only reason to spend time on this side of Salisbury Township.
Bolete Restaurant, on Seidersville Road, has been quietly one of the more decorated kitchens in the Lehigh Valley since chef Lee Chizmar and his wife, Erin Shea, opened it in 2007 inside a 200-year-old former stagecoach inn. Chizmar, a Salisbury Township native, was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic in 2015, and Bolete itself was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant in 2019. The restaurant's own website even flags a quirk locals eventually learn: its mailing address reads Bethlehem, but the building sits in Salisbury Township, not Northampton County, and GPS apps routinely send diners to the wrong spot.
For families who'll need somewhere else for Little League or soccer while Laubach is eventually closed for construction, the Salisbury Youth Association already splits its baseball, softball, football, and cheerleading activity across Laubach, Devonshire Park, and Franko Farm Recreation Area, so a future closure at one site doesn't mean the whole season disappears. And if you want a longer walk than anything at Laubach offers, Bauer Rock in South Mountain Big Rock Park is a registered Pennsylvania Heritage Geological Site, a 40-foot natural rock platform with views across the Saucon Valley, reachable on a short trail and open to leashed dogs.
The $3 million is real, and it matters. But if the last decade at Laubach has taught the township anything, it's that a confirmed grant is a milestone, not a groundbreaking. The township's own consulting engineer told commissioners in November 2025 that a decision on the separate $1 million Local Share Account request was expected sometime between April and June 2026. That window has now passed, and the township's spring newsletter, which confirmed the $3 million DCNR award, described the whole effort only as "a lengthy process" that residents should be patient with, without announcing an outcome on that second request. Until it lands, and until a bog turtle survey clears the pond design, the ballfields, the pond, and yes, that decades-old fishing rule, stay exactly as they've always been.
The Mick Seislove Team pays attention to projects like this because we live in these towns, not just sell in them. If you have questions about Salisbury Township, Laubach Park, or anything else happening in this corner of the Lehigh Valley, Contact Us.
