Residents at Odds Over the Future of Dana Point

On Feb. 26, the Dana Point City Council voted to scrap the redevelopment plan and disband the Project Area Committee that was made up of citizens in the proposed redevelopment area.

This committee of citizens voted 61 to 14 to demand that the council stop any further redevelopment plans and abolish the Redevelopment Agency. Redevelopment, according to the council, would not be addressed again unless the city was “petitioned” by the citizens to resurrect it.

As big of a bomb as the council laid with their proposed redevelopment scheme, it is amazing that they are still flirting with this very bad idea. We the citizens perceived this as a graceful way for the council to retreat from an unpopular issue and expected redevelopment to be laid to rest forever.

The redevelopment issue is not dead--far from it. Redevelopment was adopted as part of the new General Plan over the objections of their own Planning Commission and the army of outraged citizens that crowd their City Council meetings.

The Dana Point City Council approved the Chandler Sherman Trust’s 400-room hotel and 560-unit condo project on the bluff with no regard to the consequence of the resulting increased traffic and no provision for the hotel’s housing of the 1,000 or so minimum-wage hotel employees who will be brought into the area.

One can only sadly assume that they put the well being of the big money developer ahead of the citizens that elected them.

BARBARA FRIEBERG, Dana Point