Holy Moly
We just got our first look at architectural drawings for the proposed Museum Hotel and Cleo Hotel. They look great. Even the people passing by these new buildings look great. And that has me worried.
I don’t believe Mo Honarkar’s Laguna Beach Company can guarantee that we will never see homeless people, badly dressed tourists, or picketing Village Laguna residents out in front of these new buildings. In fact, we will more likely see all of the above rolled into one badly dressed Village Laguna person(s) lamenting the loss of Laguna’s old home charm when these projects are completed: “What? These atrocities have inside plumbing. Blasphemy.”
Another less obvious problem with the architectural drawings is…ah…there is something missing. I couldn’t put my finger on what I wasn’t seeing.
Buildings? Check. Trees? Check. People? Check. I kept looking. Yes, there’s Waldo. Check.
Then bam. I got it. There are no cars passing by. It appears traffic gridlock went “poof!” in these renderings. Holy moly, no more traffic once these hotels are built.
That’s all I needed to see in the drawings. Who cares if the Cleo Hotel has 103 rooms or 80 rooms? For the promise of no more traffic, I say go for it. Build 10,000 rooms without any parking spaces. Who needs spaces when there are no more cars? I’m so giddy imagining no more cars or having to hear malarkey about grandfathering spaces that I’ll grandfather 10,000 rooftop bars to each of the 10,000 rooms and comp all drink rounds. And I’ll go one better by providing free transportation at the end of the stays to Recovery Now…or my treatment of preference, Recovery Later.
Holy moly things are looking up. “Hey Mo, good news, the projects are a big green go. Now let’s do one more. Could you have your architects draw up a rendering of the new Coast Highway Pedestrian Mall? We need it to be true to form. Please put all 6.6 million tourists in it. And beware, Laguna residents are not easily fooled. At the next city council meeting, residents will count each and every one of them. Your architects will have to make each person recognizable enough to stand up to facial profiling. Take no short cuts. Be prepared to have the Chamber of Commerce run a credit check on each one of them. Do not include any pedestrians with credit scores less than 700. They are not considered tourist-worthy. Your presentation is scheduled for next Tuesday. Bring 200 10×14 renderings, along with 23,000 wallet size pictures for residents.”
The day before the Tuesday meeting, the architects called to say the project was too big to complete in time. They did their best, but couldn’t find 6.6 million tourists with credit scores over 700 without photo shopping heads from the Hamptons and Palm Beach. They asked, “Could they have 30 more days and meet right after their much-needed Recovery Now stays?” The city council agreed and thanked the architects for rehabilitating local.
Crantz tells the Indy that he’s so excited about the wallet sized renderings that he went out and bought a new wallet…locally, of course.
