In Dana Point, that old trailer park behind the Denny's along PCH, has been fully torn down since I was home last to make way for some "downtown redevelopment." Well, fully torn down...that means the trailers are gone. Most of the electrical hookups are still there, shattered glass covers the ground, and the weeds have been left to grow wild. Not that I'm nostalgic for trailer parks, but its still strange to see things changing as they are. In its hayday, I always thought of this trailer community as, frankly, sort of a dump. Now, its just blight.
This kind of transitional space is all over Dana Point: the terraced hills over near the Camino Capistrano freeway entrance, the construction at the headlands. They're ugly to begin with, made worse by the shabby fences that the city strings around them.
In the pursuit of a new, drab design, the town ends up looking abandoned and neglected. And its not as if construction is going to go any faster in this economy. So what we have in Dana Point is all of this land that's flattened, cordoned off, covered in trash, a parking lot for construction equipment and portable buildings, or a mix of several. It just doesn't fit in a place like Dana Point, which has a reputation for being a place to "go away to" even if you live there. Yep, development here irks me.
