A healthy skepticism greeted Mayor Michael Passero’s contention that young people will get themselves to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood when the city’s new Recreation Center opens there next year. Whether the mayor did on-the-spot research I don’t know, but as of last Sunday, I could see for myself that he’s probably right.

If you think back to where you were that day, it should have been outdoors. The monsoons of the previous week had dried up and the temperature was balmy. The visual was a soft autumn haze, although the air was actually carrying particles of Canadian wildfire smoke and ash.

Still, the slopes and swells around the fort gleamed green. A small fleet of sailboats tacked gracefully upstream from the Thames Yacht Club. The usual ferries made way for the sailors as they wended their way up and downriver.

Life in slow motion, in a state park so achingly lovely that any other city would be jealous.

Of course, no other city experienced the downside of earning itself a dubious national reputation over the park’s neighborhood. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the city in Kelo v. New London, against homeowners challenging the eminent domain taking of their properties to open up land for economic development. New London prevailed by a 5-to-4 vote, but in the eyes of most states failed the righteousness test. In the aftermath, 43 alarmed state legislatures tightened their eminent domain laws.

Then came the Great Recession, a change of leadership in the city’s development agency, the resignation of a disgraced governor who had championed the idea, and the departure of a key player, Pfizer Global Research, from the peninsula. Change stalled. Most of the undeveloped land waited until January of this year for firmed-up plans. Finally, Fort Trumbull is scheduled to become a neighborhood again.

In the center of the projected neighborhood of 500 apartments and a 1,200-space garage is the giant lump of bulldozed soil where the rec center is supposed to welcome New Londoners and others of all ages. On my Sunday visit I took an unscientific census of who might use the center by looking at who is already enjoying the neighborhood’s recreation possibilities.

The answer is young people, very young people, and older ones.

Striped bass and blue fish were running right past the fishing pier and the tide was right. A young man lugged his catch up to the cooler in his truck, telling strangers like me that he was saving the massive striper for his mother to make her famous fish stew. Others, young women and men, headed down to the pier with tackle. Two mothers who might have been twins themselves strolled up from the waterfront with their babies and small children. Older folks, middle-aged dog walkers, everybody.

Obviously, this scene captures a mixed reality. The Thames is clean enough to eat from. The lawns are are on cleaned soil and safe for children to explore. Yet the weather app on everyone’s cellphones kept alerting us that the air we were all breathing may have looked softly autumnal but held ash floating down from the sky.

As the world comes around to accepting that the planet needs individual and group action to reverse that sort of environmental damage, who is going to do it? My guess is that it will be people who recognize their stake in a cooler, cleaner Earth: fishermen, people with small children, dog lovers and sailors, for instance. They will get that from being in beautiful places like Fort Trumbull that they will find too precious to lose.

So, yes, I think the young people will come to a rec center at Fort Trumbull. The park is warming it up for the center, creating a reputation as a people’s place, free for all to enter and priceless to visit. The young will want to own it, and someday to hand it on to their children.

Lisa McGinley is a member of The Day Editorial Board.