MAILBAG: Paving paradise to put up more parking lots

I read with interest Michael Hoag’s letter (“Why pave paradise in Laguna Beach?,” June 13) on how our city is now in the process of changing our building codes to make it possible to build larger buildings with larger parking lots. I’m sure The Athens Group and Montage Resort are both in full agreement that this will definitely improve our quality of life since parking cars is something Athens deals with a lot, but never successfully.

On May 7, the city’s Community Planning Department sent Athens a letter advising them that its parking study for the proposed Aliso Project was still outstanding following many, many requests for its submittal. The letter gave Athens a deadline of May 30 to submit this parking study. As of today, Athens has still not complied with this request, but the Environmental Impact Report for the proposed project still remains fully under way even without a complete application. This parking study is only one of several important documents missing from the application.

As far as parking lots and handling parking, at last count here are the number of Montage Resort employee cars being parked in and around our neighborhoods:

?Former Unocal site on Coast Highway: 56+ spaces

?South Coast Medical Center: 175+ spaces

?Albertson’s underground parking structure: 25+ spaces

?Albertson’s street level parking lot: 25+ spaces

?Neighborhood, Lang Park and public access parking lots: 30+ spaces

?Aliso Creek Inn & Golf Course: ??

Total: 311+ spaces

It’s no wonder Athens is unable to complete its parking study for its proposed new project since it probably can’t count the number of cars it has strewn all over South Laguna. In addition to their employees, vendors and various services parking all over, they run an employee shuttle service almost 24/7/365 that goes up and down Coast Highway all day long transporting employees to and from South Coast Medical Center to the Montage. So, in addition to polluting our neighborhoods with cars, they add pollution to our air quality.

So, back to the city, Athens Group and the Montage working at improving our quality of life. How can our city possibly consider changing our long-standing building codes to accommodate larger buildings and larger parking lots when it’s never enough? How about the city, Athens Group and Montage actually working toward a goal that would indeed improve our quality of life versus just paving more of paradise to put up more parking lots.

SHARON LARIMER

Laguna Beach

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Ways to improve church services

Recently, while attending several local church services, I observed not only differences between the services, but also one consistency: lots of uninterested, restless and bored young people.

Too bad, that doesn’t bode well for the future for those churches.

The youths I observed lacked interest in scriptural readings, prayers, hymns and rituals.

However, the collection plate did get a bit of attention. Possible solutions that I can envision are to introduce some realism to the service by de-emphasizing the constant drone of adoration of lofty deities with mention of appreciation for the wondrous natural universe.

Also, by replacing words like sin with ignorance and offering practical knowledge instead of a blessing and actually doing instead of just praying.

OK, I’m a dreamer, but I feel that demystifying the services could perk up some young people’s ears and eyelids. Anyway, there’d be less fidgeting in the congregation. Who knows, they may actually understand and learn some useful moral messages. The youth, their churches and the world deserve it.

NIKO THERIS

Laguna Beach

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