Treasure Island Plan Is Faulty

* The map you printed in your April 18 article on Treasure Island was provided by Merrill Lynch Hubbard [the property owner].

How green it looked, with open space and those small houses. Don’t you think the public deserves a more accurate depiction of the development--one that shows almost 50% of the property designated for the 17 estate-size houses that can be up to 7,700 square feet each or the park that is little more than two acres running only 25 feet wide for much of its distance?

I hope you will print another more accurate drawing of the development to give the voters of Laguna Beach a better understanding of the proposed project.

JINGER WALLACE

Laguna Beach

* The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, in an opinion on a proposed development, asked, “Is this the way we perpetuate the wilderness and its beauty, solitude and quiet?”

If so, he warned, this arm of natural beauty would cease to be “uncluttered by the products of civilization.”

I am not so naive as to believe there will be no development at Treasure Island. But I do believe we can have a development that leaves the coastal land relatively uncluttered.

Let’s have a hotel, but let’s get rid of that hotel’s imposing wall. Let’s have no mammoth private estates. Let’s have more park. Let’s have rock and shell and “beauty, solitude and quiet.”

I fear that a victory on April 27 by Merrill Lynch Hubbard and those who see Treasure Island as a cash cow will be a victory of clutter.

Let’s make sure that does not happen. Death does not still Harry Blackmun’s words of wisdom. We would do well to heed them.

ARNOLD HANO

Laguna Beach

* Those who favor the Merrill Lynch Hubbard development at Treasure Island keep saying if we don’t get that development we’ll have to have a trailer park there.

This is absolute and total nonsense. It took the City Council two meetings to change the zoning from trailer park to hotel/resort.

It will take the City Council two more meetings to do it again, when the “no” vote wins April 27. The Coastal Commission has made it clear it will not tolerate trailer park zoning at the site. No council member wants it. The people of Laguna don’t want it. It won’t happen.

The argument is just another red herring tossed out by the Merrill Lynch side. It knows it is losing the support of Laguna’s voters.

It wants so desperately to win--and make more millions--that it will say anything, do anything to fool the electorate.

A.E. ELLIOTT

Laguna Beach