Old Tune on Jordan Ranch

Having followed the Jordan Ranch drama for the past three years, I find it amusing to see the latest character to enter the scene, Gov. Pete Wilson, mouthing arguments that other proponents of the project abandoned years ago.

I refer in particular to the one that goes: “If we don’t allow this development to go ahead, a far worse one might happen in the future.”

What pathetic poppycock! If Bob Hope, the PGA, the Washington-based and well-connected Potomac Investment Associates, the director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan, and Pete Wilson himself can’t get their way with Jordan Ranch, then what ordinary mortal developer would even bother to try at any time in the future?

Furthermore, as development occurs, the pressure to protect remaining open spaces will increase--not decrease. Those who fled the traffic congestion, overcrowding, street crime and air pollution of the San Fernando Valley recognize only too well that overdevelopment will bring with it features from which they so recently escaped. They become slow-growthers on arrival.

ROSIE McCABE

Oak Park