Has Bushie or Ah-nold declared Laguna Beach a disaster area, so that taxpayers can subsidize the rich folks' clean-up? and so they continue to have an extra incentive to build behemoths on unstable land?
On 6/3/05, Louis Proyect wrote: > LA Times, June 3, 2005 > LAGUNA BEACH LANDSLIDE > To Many in Laguna Beach, That Mansion Was Too Much > Some blame the home for the slide, but experts doubt that. Still, it's seen > as building excess. > > By Dan Weikel and Jeff Gottlieb, Times Staff Writers > > It sat on an unstable hillside, 6,300 square feet of concrete, stucco and > glass overlooking the ocean — an embodiment of the California dream, and to > some an oversized symbol of coastal development run amok. > > By Bluebird Canyon standards, the low-slung modernist house at 925 Oriole > Drive in Laguna Beach was a palace that dominated the hillside like a > miniature Getty Center, dwarfing nearby homes. > > ADVERTISEMENT > But the mansion, built by investors in 2001, never sold and had never been > occupied. Defects riddled the property, and the super-sized house insulted > the sensibilities of some local residents who dubbed it "the mausoleum" and > thought it too big for the geologically sensitive area. > > The "Sinatra house" — so named by locals based on false rumors that > relatives of singer Frank Sinatra owned the property — is now a wreck, its > once-sleek lines a jumble of obtuse angles. It was among the roughly 18 > homes destroyed or badly damaged in Wednesday's landslide in Bluebird > Canyon. The home's size immediately fueled speculation that the structure > somehow led to the slope's failure. -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl M., paraphrasing Dante A.
