Mailbag:

I can’t believe the residents who live near Brethren Christian Junior and Senior High School are actually suing the city over the construction of a gymnasium (“Residents sue over Brethren expansion,” June 25).

The residents allege they are concerned over the increase in traffic and noise that the gym will bring to their neighborhood. Were it not for the school, that land would have been developed long ago. Hundreds of additional cars would be driving in and out of their tract 24/7.

One would think that the local residents would prefer an occasional basketball game to increased daily traffic. Where I grew up in Lakewood/Long Beach, every junior high and high school had a gym.

I see no reason why Brethren Christian should not have one.

Any Banning Ranch development outrage in Huntington Beach?

The Independent would do well to take a page from another respected local newspaper, the Daily Pilot, and report on the proposed Banning Ranch development across the Santa Ana River and the devastating impact it would have on our city, particularly Southeast Huntington Beach.

Outside of direct impacts this development would bring to the Newport Beach/Costa Mesa area, it would flood the surrounding area with thousands of vehicles and increase prospects for building the dreaded Banning Bridge (connecting 19th Street in Costa Mesa and Banning to Magnolia Avenue here). Our quality of life, already imperiled by Pacific Coast Highway development downtown, would suffer catastrophically just from the added traffic alone. All local residents should be opposing this nightmare development scenario for Huntington Beach.

Maybe there’s a better place for Cultural Center than small park

The new cultural center building proposed for downtown Huntington Beach (“Neighbors voice opposition,” June 25) seems like a good idea — only with a bad location suggested. Residents of Huntington Beach like me who do not live downtown but drive there know how hard parking can be to find sometimes. If more people are attracted to that area, it will make it harder to park and patronize the downtown merchants. So that location of the suggested building will reduce downtown business and thus reduce Huntington Beach sales tax income.

I suggest that a better location for the proposed new cultural center building would be next to the Central Library on Talbert Avenue. On the city website, the library is actually called the Huntington Beach Public Library & Cultural Center. The new building would fit in there architecturally whereas it does not really fit in the suggested downtown area. And because major cultural events most often occur on Friday and Saturday evenings, the current library parking lot would be available for more parking because the library closes at 5 p.m. those days. This would only use a few acres of a very large park rather than eliminating all of a small downtown park that its local residents use.