Mailbag:

Regarding “H.B. to oversee Sunset,” July 9:

My wife and I have been property owners in Sunset Beach since 1974. We raised our two sons there in the small community atmosphere. We moved to Old Town Huntington Beach about 14 years ago, and now a very nice, young couple is renting our Sunset Beach cottage and plan to start their new family in the same small community atmosphere.

After we moved to Huntington Beach, the city hired a contractor to re-tar the street and, in the process, the contractor destroyed the curb, wiping out the curb in some spots and chipping it in others.

Apparently, the heavy equipment operator wasn’t skilled enough to know that when the front bucket is on the pavement, he was supposed to use the separate left and right side braking systems to keep his front bucket from smashing into the curb. I told the city about the damage, and reminded them that the city still hadn’t paid the contractor since the job was not finished, and that they had the power to withhold the payment until repairs were made by the contractor. The city did nothing.

A couple of years back, the city put up a ballot measure to improve infrastructure. When it got the money, they used it to pay off old debts. The broken up and crumbling curb and gutter is still there with its ever-present pool of mosquito larvae. The city of Huntington Beach is too busy selling out its own small town ambience to developers. One only has to look at the commercial development of Huntington Beach while remembering its quaint small town history to know what the Huntington Beach City Council has planned for Sunset.

An eight-level parking structure along the green belt for the entire length of the town would accommodate tens of thousands of more people. The commercial zone along both sides of Coast Highway packed wall-to-wall full of KFCs and Taco Bells would feed them. Lovely. The permission for these wonderful improvements would, of course, be granted by the people of the town by way of their elected officials: the Huntington Beach City Council.

Gym will be nuisance

In answer to the letter from Sam Pinterpe (“Gym doesn’t warrant protest,” Mailbag, July 2), here is why the gym warrants protest:

The issue here is what is appropriate for the middle of a residential tract in Huntington Beach.

There are no other high schools with mega-gymnasiums and football stadiums in interior locations in Huntington Beach — which is why the overwhelming majority of the surrounding neighbors, more than 400 of us, oppose this project.

There are no 27,000-square-foot, 1,400-person capacity gymnasiums, no 624-seat, 18-foot-high bleachers and no Friday night football games in interior locations in Huntington Beach.

More than 1,000 people going in and out of a residential neighborhood at one time is a very big deal. In addition to traffic, there are safety, air quality, noise and parking problems. The city is allowing this expansion with only 212 parking spaces on-site and has said that it is OK for any overflow to park on the residential streets. This would leave no neighborhood parking for residents and their visitors. Even if the vehicles could park on site, they still have to drive through the neighborhood to get there, and this is just not acceptable.

Yes, this gym and football stadium is a very big deal, which is why the neighborhood is up in arms and has filed a lawsuit.

ALISON GOLDENBERG

Huntington Beach