Ridge Top Parcel More Than ‘Place of Grass, Weeds’

The Nov. 26 article inaccurately described steeply rolling ridgeline acreage which Jack Binion, poker host, has acquired in hopes of developing 32 level residential pads. Your reporter referred to our beloved ridgeline as a “hilltop overgrown with grass, weeds and cactus”--a put-down description that fails to evoke the uniqueness which may be found by a closer look, a sniff of the sea breeze, and a hand gathering of the fragrant, feathery-leaved wormwood sage.

This hillscape is a formation of rounded stones cemented in ancient sand and studded with jewel-like rocks. This ridge line is a green, gray and golden museum piece which encompasses globally endangered habitat with the highest scientific ranking in the state.

It is beloved and protected by the residents of Laguna Beach, who have been there with paints and palette. The chaparral continues to thrive because it has never been exposed to sheep, cattle or bulldozers. Laguna’s painters and poets have managed to build homes one at a time, maintaining as much foliage as is fire safe and using reasonable preservationist technology.

Let Binion keep the bulldozers in Las Vegas. Architects should be found who can build to the natural terrain. Let required modifications and creativity be seen not as a nuisance but as a blessing! Let nature be Binion’s ace in the hole.

FREDERICK M. LANG

Laguna Beach