Mall Upgrade Is City-Imposed ‘Blight’

The approval by the Redevelopment Agency (composed of our City Council members) of a $35-million plan to expand the Mission Viejo Mall is another example of decision making, Mission Viejo-style (“Mission Viejo OKs Funds to Expand Mall,” July 8).

The mall has never done great business and it is located just down Marguerite Parkway from the residents who have recently had a huge chain hardware store shoved down their throats. This is also the same neighborhood where Mission Hospital recently expanded; the same neighborhood slated to host the city animal shelter; and the same that already bulges throughout the school term with cars driven by Saddleback Community College and Cal State Fullerton satellite students unable to find adequate parking on campus.

The rationale for using redevelopment funds to facilitate the mall expansion is that (get this!) traffic congestion is “blighting” the neighborhood. This concern about worsening traffic in the area comes a few weeks after the council bulldozed neighborhood residents objecting to the new hardware store on the grounds that it would worsen traffic. The only blight in this city is primarily the product of actions taken by our own city and county governments to accommodate large developers.

As one concerned about the state and federal budget deficits, I find this novel approach to the definition of “blight” particularly galling. Redevelopment funds are to be used in those areas truly suffering economic decline; they are not to be used by the truly middle-class to cooperate with profitable mall developers/owners.

If dollars grew on trees, and our bankrupt governments could staunch their hemorrhaging budgets by just “picking” more dollars, I might be for Mission Viejo getting its “fair share” of the governmental largess. But dollars don’t grow on trees, and other cities and rural areas right here in Southern California need those limited resources far more than Mission Viejo does. I don’t take from the needy, and I really resent my government using lawyers to find novel ways to go after the few crumbs set aside to aid distressed areas.

D. CANNON

Mission Viejo