Calabasas Commons From Another Viewpoint

My experience of the new Calabasas Commons mall is different from Stuart Silverstein’s [“Calabasas Man Finds a Commons Denominator,” Jan. 26].

Where he finds a pleasant creation of a Main Street, I find an ocean of asphalt and automobiles rimmed by silly Disneyland architecture that dwarfs human scale. While he enthuses about Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and other chain stores, I mourn the absence of the small businesses that these alienating giants have squashed by sheer capital. Where he encounters community, I see narcissists and materialists on parade in the chichi boutiques and fighting for parking slots for their sport-utility vehicles.

Silverstein has cheerfully gotten over the loss of the “pristine sliver of the Santa Monica Mountains” that “construction crews mercilessly flattened.” I, who with others supported cityhood several years ago preciselyto stop this project and others like it, will never forgive the compromisers who once again have allowed developers to disrupt, dominate and cheapen nature, people and community.

ROBERT BENSON

Calabasas