by Garrison Frost

In the South Bay, bad development ideas are a dime a dozen. Seems like every time you turn around somebody wants to knock down a treasured old home or build some kind of polluting, traffic-inducing monstrosity. Unfortunately, even the worst of these ideas can take months or even years to reject, often only after expensive litigation or divisive community referenda. Redondo Beach's Heart of the City project took years to pull off the table – and many would argue that it's not dead even yet. That big plan to build condos next to Del Amo in Torrance practically tore the city apart. Hermosa Beach's oil drilling proposal, now more than 10 years old, is still in the courts. Clearly, we need some ideas that will go down without a fight. Or better, some ideas that are down even before they're proposed.

The following development ideas meet that need. They're pre-rejected – total non-starters. No costly legal appeals, no City Council debates, no activist groups, no staff memos to the Coastal Commission, no yard signs, no letter to the editor campaigns to alert people that the development in question is bad for our kids. These babies are gone before they ever see the light of day:

The Manhattan Beach Municipal Airport.

A 30-foot anti-tsunami sea wall along the bike path from Palos Verdes to El Segundo, trading ocean views for a renewed sense of security.

Torrance Towers, a 40-story office/residential development on what is now the Madrona Marsh.

Portuguese Bend Coastal Motor Speedway.

Rolling Hills Rifleman Live Game Hunting Park in the old Chandler Quarry property.

The Sepulveda Boulevard Truck Corridor

The San Pedro Pinkerton "Union Buster" Memorial

The King Harbor Nuclear Power Station

The Manhattan Beach Pier Day Laborer Center

Conversion of Valley Drive and Ardmore Avenue in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach into an underground thoroughfare, and the development of the aboveground space into a massive condo complex called The Greenbelt.

Extend the concept of undergrounding in the beach cities to include not only utility wires, but also streetlights, traffic signals, mailboxes, stop signs, incidental landscaping and houses built before 1996 that have fewer than 3,000 square feet.

Closure of upper Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach to make way for a giant outdoor beer garden and motorcycle museum.

Opening the open coastal bluffs in South Redondo to the development of new apartment buildings.

Artificial sandbars off beach city commercial districts to accomodate new parking structures.

The sale of downtown Lomita to an Indian tribe to facilitate the creation of a giant casino.

El Segundo Hyperion Plant Recreational Facility and Family Fun Park.

(June 22, 2006)

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