Walk through Pulis Recreation Park this month and you will pass two pieces of infrastructure that tell opposite stories about how Franklin Lakes spends its attention. One is the new Jake's Law All-Inclusive Playground, finished this spring after a single construction season, sitting next to the turf surface of Herbst Field of Dreams. The other is a short drive away on Old Mill Road, where the tennis and pickleball courts have been visibly cracked since last summer and are still waiting on a fix that hasn't arrived.
Both are borough projects. Both involve public money and public process. Only one of them moved fast.
A Playground Built In One Build Season
The Jake's Law playground opened at Pulis Recreation Park this spring, built to be usable by children of every ability level, not just able-bodied kids on standard equipment. The borough framed it as more than a play structure: a place meant to let every child, regardless of ability, play and connect alongside their peers. It sits adjacent to the Herbst Field of Dreams, the turf field that hosts the Dream Team Special Needs Summer Baseball Program, which held its 2026 opening day on June 19. The pairing is not accidental. The borough built an inclusive field first, then built an inclusive playground next to it.
From the point construction began to the ribbon-cutting, this took roughly one season. That is the speed Franklin Lakes moves at when a project is new, visible, and easy to rally support around.
Two Farmers Markets, Different Timelines
The borough's other fall showpiece is the Farmers & Artisan Market at Veterans Plaza, and the number here is worth sitting with: 27 consecutive Saturdays, from May 16 through November 21, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. That is one of the longer running seasons among Bergen County's Saturday markets, most of which wrap by mid-October. Franklin Lakes stretches its market almost into Thanksgiving week.
Layered on top of that weekly market is a second, separate event: the Franklin Lakes Harvest Farmers and Artisan Market, a one-time gathering at the same Veterans Plaza address on November 7. It is not a special edition of the Saturday market. It is a different event, run under a harvest theme, landing two weeks before the regular season's final Saturday.
| Event | Dates | Location | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farmers & Artisan Market | Saturdays, May 16 to Nov 21, 2026 | Veterans Plaza, 745 Franklin Ave | Weekly, 10am to 2pm, produce and artisan vendors |
| Harvest Farmers and Artisan Market | November 7, 2026 | Veterans Plaza, 745 Franklin Ave | One-time, autumn themed craft and produce market |
If you only know about the weekly market, the Harvest Market on November 7 will look redundant on a calendar app. It isn't. It's a distinct booking, with its own vendor list and its own reason to show up, sandwiched inside the tail end of the regular season. Two market Saturdays in November, back to back in spirit if not in date, is a lot of programming for a town this size to sustain in a single month.
The Courts Are Still Waiting
Compare that pace to what's happening at Old Mill Woodlands. The six tennis courts and four pickleball courts there developed cracking and surface deterioration during last year's summer season, deterioration serious enough that the borough acknowledged it directly in a community notice. Rather than simply repaving, the borough opted to pursue a Green Acres grant to fund the repair, which meant a public discussion had to happen first. That meeting was held on January 26, 2026, in the Borough Hall Conference Room, with tennis and pickleball users specifically invited to weigh in on the condition of the courts and what improvements they'd want to see.
Seven months later, there's no announced repair date. What hasn't changed is the administrative calendar around the courts themselves: seasonal memberships still end October 31, same as every year, whether or not the surface underneath your feet has been addressed. If you're a member renewing this fall, you are effectively paying full season price to play out the string on a court the borough itself flagged as degraded, with the fix still moving through a grant process rather than a work order.
That's the real contrast. A brand-new, ADA-forward playground went from idea to ribbon-cutting in one season. A repair to an existing court has been in process for over a year with no completion date attached.
Why New Outpaces Fixed
None of this means Franklin Lakes is neglecting its courts on purpose. Grant-funded repairs typically move slower than fully budgeted new construction because they require an external funding decision before work can start, and that adds a layer the playground project didn't have to clear in the same way. But the practical effect for a resident is the same regardless of the mechanism: if you're deciding whether to renew a court membership or wait out the season, the honest answer right now is that nobody outside Borough Hall has a repair date to give you.
The town's private sector shows the opposite instinct. Pazza, the Italian restaurant on Franklin Avenue that's been a fixture in town for years, is still drawing a loyal local following for its wood-fired pizza and pasta menu. A few minutes away, Farm & Flour on Pulis Avenue, opened by Celeste Esposito and her husband Andres Sanchez Perez, ties directly back into that same food family: Esposito's relatives run Pazza, and her father was an original owner of the Mahwah restaurants Esposito's and Sonny and Tony's. That's three linked restaurants across two towns, run by one extended family who keep reinvesting in the businesses they already have rather than starting over somewhere new. It's a small but telling counterpoint to the courts situation. When the incentive to reinvest in something existing is personal rather than procedural, it happens faster.
If you want one more marker of the town's current moment, Franklin Lakes native Dylan Harper spent this past season as a rookie contributor for the San Antonio Spurs, helping the team reach the 2026 NBA Finals. It's not directly tied to municipal budgets or grant applications, but it's the kind of hometown detail that tells you something about civic pride heading into a fall with two market events, a new playground already in use, and a set of courts still on the borough's to-do list.
What This Means If You Live Here
None of this is a reason to think less of Franklin Lakes. It's a reason to know how the town actually allocates its attention. New, visible, mission-driven projects like an inclusive playground move through the borough quickly and cleanly. Maintenance on existing recreational infrastructure, even acknowledged and flagged infrastructure, moves at grant-application speed. If your household relies on the Old Mill Woodlands courts, plan your fall around the courts you have, not the courts that might get fixed. If you've been meaning to catch the farmers market, you've got Saturdays clear through November 21, plus one more distinct chance on November 7 that most people mistake for a repeat of the same event.
Knowing which projects move fast and which ones sit in process is the kind of local knowledge that doesn't show up in a town brochure. It shows up in what you notice when you actually live here.
If you're weighing what a home in Franklin Lakes is really worth given how the town invests in its public spaces, or you're curious how these details factor into value for buyers who've been watching the area, Michael Properties can walk you through it with the same attention to specifics.
