On April 10, The United States Department of Treasury approved Governor Phil Murphy’s recommended designations for Opportunity Zones throughout the Garden State.  Five of the 169 sites are in Atlantic County.  They are as follows:  Atlantic City, Egg Harbor City, Egg Harbor Township, Pleasantville, and Somers Point.  The Opportunity Zone Program is designed to drive long-term capital investments into low-income rural and urban communities.

Under federal legislation, eligible Opportunity Zones were census tracts with a poverty rate of 20 percent or a median family income up to 80 percent of the area median. Governor Murphy was authorized to designate up to 25 percent of the state’s eligible low-income census tracts (up to 169 tracts) as Opportunity Zones.