Arts Park in Sepulveda Basin

Regarding the excellent story by Doug Smith on the “arts park” in the Sepulveda Basin (Nov. 17), my best guess is that, if a group of college sophomore urban planning students was given the assignment of finding the craziest place for a theater, they’d select the basin.

Why would anyone pick the lowest part of the Valley--an area that floods at the merest hint of rain--for a multimillion-dollar development? On top of that, the site is virtually at the foot of a runway for the busiest general-aviation airport in the world. Van Nuys Airport has something in excess of 500,000 operations annually, many of those by student pilots. There have been numerous crashes and crash-landings in the cornfields and golf courses of the basin in the last few years.

And they want to build a 2,500-seat theater there. Brilliant.

Let’s send the “progress at any price” real estate promoters and their “San Francisco-based professional fund-raisers” packing and leave the Sepulveda Basin to hell alone.

BENNETT J. MINTZ

Encino