 Three years after Season 6 , at the start of Season 7 ( 2017 ) , is it revealed that Leslie and Ron have developed an apparent hatred for each other . Both have left the Parks Department , with Ron having started his own construction company . Both are competing in a bidding war for a piece of land in Pawnee owned by the Newport family . Leslie wishes to turn it into a national park , while Ron 's company has partnered with <unk> to turn it into a new corporate campus . After a function where the two teams present their proposals , Leslie and Ron have a bitter exchange of words , prompting Ben and the rest of the team to lock the both of them in the Parks Department overnight , during which the two reconcile their differences . After much prying , Leslie learns the real story from Ron 's side . After she took Jerry and April to work with her , and Tom and Donna left to run their businesses , Ron didn 't recognize anyone he worked with anymore , prompting him to make an unthinkable decision : to ask Leslie for a job in the federal government , so he could work with people he knew again . However he reminds Leslie how she unknowingly stood him up for lunch due to her new hectic life , which he felt was the " punctuation mark on a sentence that had already been written . " So Ron left the Parks Department and began his construction company . He and Leslie are eventually able to settle their differences and rekindle their friendship . 
