It is surprising and alarming to many Laguna Beach citizens that mayor Bob Whalen and other council members Sue Kempf and Peter Blake voted to ask city staff to do an environmental impact study on possible destruction of the W.P.A. tower in the village entrance plaza.
The Works Progress Administration was formed by the federal government to employ as many as three million people in the great depression of the 1930s. The W.P.A. designed and built projects all over the U.S.A. In our case, it happened to be a cylindrical Spanish-style sewer plant and light house on the hill above, which was actually a vent.
Many millions of U.S. citizens were without work in the great depression. Our W.P.A. project gave them a job to design and build something useful and hope for their future.
Years ago, the City Council considered moving the old main lifeguard tower, once part of a gas station, to Bluebird park. Nic Billy, a teacher at LBHS, started a petition to keep it at Main Beach. Now it is probably one of the most photographed structures in Laguna Beach.
The tower and lighthouse are part and parcel of all of us and totally compatible with what people are now calling the million dollar mushroom, proposed for the village entrance. Lets keep the tower and lighthouse, have a city-wide contest to name it and light it, the light house and “mushroom” at night, and put the restrooms for the plaza in the tower, rather then spend hundreds of thousands to build them somewhere else in the village entrance plaza. Please don’t destroy our tower!
Roger Carter, Laguna Beach
Perhaps the Honakars could donate the funds and expertise to renovate and repurpose the Digester.