Norwood News

With their playground padlocked shut, two kids ran around benches and trees, playing with sticks.

That was the scene last Thursday at Sachkerah Woods, in the southeastern section of Van Cortlandt Park (at the corner of Gun Hill Road and Jerome Avenue), where the city has shut down a relatively new playground facility while the Parks Department works to fix a leaking underground water pipe. 

Sachkerah Woods Playground opened to great fanfare less than two years ago, in the summer of 2007. It was a $2.9 million piece of the $240 million in parks improvements provided by the city in exchange for using part of Van Cortlandt Park to build the Croton Water Filtration Plant.

Though some local park activists have their suspicions, the Parks Department says the leaking pipes have nothing to do with the filtration plant, which is being built in a nine-story hole in the ground adjacent to Sachkerah Woods.

The leaking pipe is attached to the playground’s spray shower. The Parks Department is also repairing the color concrete at the playground, which workers were forced to break through to get at the leaking pipe.

Closed since the beginning of April, Parks Department spokesperson Jesslyn Moser said in an email, “We expect to complete work and reopen the playground in approximately four weeks, depending on the weather.”

Christina Taylor, executive director of the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Taylor said. “It’s already been closed for four weeks. This weekend it was up in the 80s and there was no place for these kids to go.”