Prefers office

There were several letters written to The Acorn regarding the Lowe's project, but these letters did not state the facts in a forthright manner and the discrepancies need to be pointed out.

The office complex would create higher-paying quality jobs and those employees would shop and eat in Westlake Village, thereby adding substantially to the tax base. Lowe's employees would not come close to duplicating the monies spent by an office complex's employees.

Offices will not create the kind of traffic that Lowe's would. There would be over 22,000 extra car trips each and every weekend, over a million unnecessary trips a year, with Lowe's. Can you imagine the amount of toxins spewed into our Westlake Village air with these million trips that would not occur with the offices?

The developers will have you believe there will be upscale restaurants located in the development. Do you really believe a quality restaurant would want to locate next to a big box hardware store? Maybe some more fast food joints would find that location desirable.

The center will be open at 6 a.m. to accommodate their contract customers. Have you heard the noise when large semis back up? There is no way to mitigate the loud noise that will be heard each and every day very early in the morning.

There is no shortage of money in the city, so if this is a case of pure economics, approving the Lowe's project would be a case of pure greed. The few extra thousands are not worth the degradation of our lifestyle. We can all see the paving over of a large part of Westlake. If we are going to pave, why not try to keep the damage to a minimum. A seven-day-a-week, 200,000square-foot box hardware store is not the answer. Ray and Carol Kirschbaum Westlake Village