Dear Editor,
Thank you for your continuing coverage of the two “LART” (Los Alamitos Race Track) property issues, Measure L’s ill-conceived love child, a 33-acre logistics facility, and Measure L’s evil twin, Cypress’ Measure A.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for your continuing coverage of the two “LART” (Los Alamitos Race Track) property issues, Measure L’s ill-conceived love child, a 33-acre logistics facility, and Measure L’s evil twin, Cypress’ Measure A.
Long ago, while Hollywood Park demolished the golf course to make way for development, Cypress’ voters wisely chose to keep the race track and golf course properties zoned for public and semi-public uses only. They also took the right to rezone out of the politicians’ hands and placed it in the hands of the voters.
As a result, a new golf course was built, but since racetrack barns had taken away some of the property, it was smaller and inferior. Worse, the new lessees designed and marketed it for expatriate executives and visitors, not local residents.
The old “Los Alamitos Country Club” had been a success and provided open space to both Cypress and Los Alamitos residents. It was part of our heritage, a legacy of the Vessels family’s love of horses and of open space. The new “Cypress Country Club” looked more like a military bunker from Katella and Cerritos Avenues, and eventually failed.
The new property owners, working with Cypress officials, began a series of voter initiatives designed to rezone the property a little bit at a time. Measure L was last year’s initiative, Measure A is this years. Both over 160 pages of legalese written by the property owners’ attorneys. (Need I say more?)
What is needed is a comprehensive approach to the remaining property, with the owners making some trade offs in terms of parkland (and possibly that proposed Seniors’ continuing care facility) in return for the huge profits they gain from the rezoning away from public/semi-public use.
A reasonable compromise may be possible, especially if Cypress residents resoundingly defeat Measure A, this June.
An unreasonable compromise, such as modestly reducing truck bays on that lot we thought would become a facility for our seniors, is simply putting lipstick on a pig.
Dave Emerson
Los Alamitos