Mailbag: Museum expansion will harm Fun Zone

Would you like to have your favorite childhood place taken away from you and made into a museum?

If you answered no, then you know how we and many other people feel about the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum exhibit that is proposed for a portion of the Balboa Fun Zone. The $40-million exhibit will take the place of the Balboa Candy Store and many other buildings with extraordinary history.

The people behind ExplorOcean claim they will recreate everything that they destroy, but they cannot bring back memories. It will not be the same.

Everything new will take away the charm that the Fun Zone has. The Fun Zone has been on the Balboa Peninsula for 75 years, and something with that much history that has stood for that long should not be partially torn down.

It should be made into a landmark. And let’s face it, children just don’t want to go to a museum.

Also, children who have grown up to be adults who have great memories at the Fun Zone will want to revisit their favorite childhood place with their children. The popularity will plummet, people will stop coming, and the museum will fail and be forced to close.

The Fun Zone hasn’t and won’t change. The Fun Zone has proven that it will never fail. Children don’t want museums; they want fun and rides. They want to be able to get candy and ice cream where their parents, and hopefully their children, will too.

The exhibit, if built, will be built for the museum’s 25th anniversary. The construction will begin later this year and not end until 2017! People will want to have fun during that time, but where will they go?

The charismatic and original Fun Zone will be totally new and different. All of the charm will be erased. There is already a building for the museum, and no one even goes in it!

It took place of the bumper cars, and I know everyone misses those more than they will miss the museum. I’m not saying don’t build the museum. A museum is a great idea — just don’t build it there.

Please don’t take away the Fun Zone.

Paige and Noelle Reyna

Las Vegas

* Leave trash service alone

First we trade our beautiful, clean, white street cleaners with meticulously careful drivers for dirty gray trucks that just push the dirt and dust around the streets. Now the city is considering revising our trash service!

I can hardly wait to have my street lined with brownish-green trash barrels.

Why don’t we just merge with Costa Mesa and become one great gray-khaki city?

Because we won’t need the alleys for trash collection, the City Council can probably think of a way of outsourcing our alleys. Perhaps make them into “toll alleys” to make a few more bucks for the city.

Joan McCauley

Newport Beach