It would be easy to just  credit the controversial filtration plant deal for the construction of the beautiful new Sachkerah Woods Playground in Van Cortlandt Park.

The $2.9 million for the playground comes directly from the deal that made it possible for the city to destroy public parkland in order to site the plant.

If you relied on official information like the Parks Department press release, that’s all you would know.

You wouldn’t know that the Parks Department virtually abandoned that 11-acre section of the park in the 1990s, surrendering it to the weeds, and the illicit activity that took root among them.

And you wouldn’t know that it was ordinary residents like Ora Holloway and other volunteers who banded to together in their free time to reclaim the area. On weekends they collected litter, cleared weeds and planted flowers.

Or that in 1996, on the ground the volunteers cleared, they helped staffers from the Saturn car company build a playground in a single day.  

You also wouldn’t know that in 2002 an innovative community design project, organized by the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park and New Yorkers for Parks, which solicited input from local youth, gave shape to the Parks Department’s final architectural plans.

It’s important to remember that many community achievements like Sachkerah Woods are tilled and cultivated at the grassroots over many years.

Holloway jokingly suggested in comments at the ribbon-cutting that, because the new playground is so close to her heart, it should be called Ora’s Playground.

We’ve already started calling it that.