Residents at Odds Over the Future of Dana Point

I queried a resident of Monarch Beach: “Where will the minimum-wage employees of the five-star luxury hotel and golf course reside?” The reply: “Well, they’ll live in the Lantern District slums where they are now.” In other words, it’s not in my back yard.

My back yard will now have a championship golf course where there have been denuded acres of stark, raw, barren land (sans gnatcatcher and coastal shrub). A court-ordered injunction in 1972 halted development after the land was bulldozed.

Big money is now back. The raped and barren coastal acres that I’ve seen for all these years as I drive up Coast Highway will finally be developed. OK, I’m glad to see some green (on the land). But let’s not sacrifice original Dana Point, the Lantern Village, with its unique beach community homes to the inevitable overcrowding that the “Destination Resorts” will cause.

The Dana Point Resort, Marina Inn, Ritz-Carlton, Dana Point Inn, the Hilton and the Riveria Resort complexes across from “Hole-in-the-Wall” are forever in need of minimum-wage employees to staff their establishments and to keep the flower beds free of weeds. Newport Beach has Costa Mesa to absorb their minimum wage employees. We have Lantern Village.

I personally prefer the uniqueness of Lantern Village. I don’t like the guarded gates, speed bumps, associations, and every third home a reverse plan of mine. To each his own, that’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

Once again, how many planning commissioners, City Council members and city staffers reside in Lantern Village, a.k.a. “slums”? None that I’m aware of.

Let’s unite and be proud of all of Dana Point. No slums are needed and should not be accepted or tolerated.

LISA ROBERTS, Dana Point