Reconsider Decision on Ritz Carlton Hotel

It took me 15 years to recognize and to stop my self-destructive behavior. When I did, my life reached success beyond belief. Now that I am watching our peninsula’s struggle with a cluster of self-defeating decisions, I am praying for the same miraculous change to take place. But for now, the Palos Verdes Peninsula is a giant scorpion that is self-inflicting deadly stings!

The first sting came while we still enjoyed one of the best school systems left in Southern California. All we had to do to save its declining days was to come to the rescue with less than $100 per household. We pay double that for trash. I guess trash is more important than the future of our children!

The second sting struck when we refused to house the beautiful architectural pearl of the Ritz Carlton hotel on the peninsula. The hotel could have put Palos Verdes Peninsula on the world map, right next to Monte Carlo or the prestigious French Riviera. As a direct result of that, the value of our homes would have skyrocketed. Thanks to some ill-informed people, we managed to vote ourselves out of this option as well.

If the alternative to the hotel site could have been a wild and untouched coastline, I would have been the first person to vote for that! However, let’s be realistic: once the land is in the hands of a developer, he won’t turn it into marshlands just to please our sense of beauty. Our options were to choose between ugly rooftops of crowded homes, or a world-class hotel with its blooming public parks and lush golf course.

We are faced with that choice again. And still our local scorpions are working hard to blow it.

The choice is once again between a 450-room hotel that is an architectural masterpiece nestled among native palm trees, bordered by a romantic shoreline (safe and gang-free!) open to all of us to enjoy breathtaking sunsets, or between a mass of concrete walls of unsightly apartment buildings.

If we build a hotel twice as large as what is being proposed, the resulting traffic still would not come close to what Marineland once generated. And, truly, was there ever a traffic problem? Never!

Once again, the option is not a hotel versus natural coastline, but an elegant hotel with shops and restaurants for all of us, versus an ocean of undulating rooftops and overcrowded dwellings. Before you make a decision, go and take a walk in the concrete forest of apartment buildings next to the ex-Marineland site, and think again: Is this what you really want? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and deliver that last fatal sting!

ILDY LEE ROSEN

Rancho Palos Verdes