Gripe : Paving Paradise to Put Up a Nature Center : TOM POLITEO, San Pedro : Computer software designer

Here on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the citizens are boiling mad, angry enough to have a tea party with all the water they could boil.

The issue is the siting of a nature center, which at a better location and in a more fiscally responsible form would receive popular endorsement. But for a $4-million budget, the county has come up with a nature center that would destroy as much nature as the money will permit.

This is why many say the Deane Dana Nature Center, approved by supervisors last week, will “eat out the heart of Friendship Park.” The center itself, a 6,000-square-foot, 28-foot-high facility with parking lot, urban-style landscaping and access road, is being placed at the most scenic spot, atop a knoll near the middle of the park.

Public opposition to the center has been overwhelming. Every civic, community and environmental group that favored county Proposition A (which drives the proposal) is opposed. Supervisor Deane Dana seems to be the county’s only ardent supporter of the Deane Dana Nature Center. It seems Dana wants his legacy to be king of the knoll. And because Dana is not running for re-election, he has nothing to fear from his public-be-damned attitude. Worse yet, the other supervisors went along. So Dana can do exactly what he wants in his district, despite public outcry, even if no one else wants it.

Should we really view Dana as so selfish and petty? Without evil intent, this man simply seems to have his heart set on this center being placed in the best spot in the park. But Dana has the chance to do something greater here than build an edifice in an unpopular and distasteful location in Friendship Park. He can move the government back home again where it belongs, with the people that comprise it, and find a different place for this nature center. That would be democracy’s best legacy for an elected representative.