Building mars scenic area

For 13 years I have lived along the Mulholland Scenic Corridor, a two-lane blacktop that travels through some of the grandest scenery in the Santa Monica Mountains.

One Mulholland vista is now blighted by a massive structure at the highway's junction with Sierra Creek Road, rumored to be a house of worship but being built along the lines of the Mall of America. Years have passed and it's still under construction. It has put a blot on the skyline as a dominant, incompatible monstrosity in place of what previously had been a tree-shaded knoll and view to an expanse of the innocent blue heavens. The scope of the project and its location in the middle of a bucolic burg defies reason.

And now in the opposite direction a houselike structure has been framed atop the ridge that forms the panoramic view of mountains from the scenic highway. Except for a few slender inconspicuous communications towers long entrenched atop Castro Peak, there is not a single building to mar the entire breadth of this ridgeline.

It is one of the last great works of nature's wild art to be viewed in our area: a rugged buttress against civilization comprised of sandstone outcroppings and chaparral-covered flanks, crowning a valley inhabited by varied wildlife.

There are sensible building plans and insensible ones. Affordable community housing? There's a noble goal. Opulent edifices to worship or entertain in, smack dab on ridge tops in the Santa Monica Mountains? There's an ignoble idea. Gloria Glasser Agoura Hills