Editor:
The proposed Bergamot development, coming before the City Council on Tuesday, puts me in mind of Shelley's poem of nearly 200 years ago about Ozymandias, another name for pharaoh Ramses II. Ruins of a statue of the self-styled "king of kings'' had been found in the desert. On the pedestal was written: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'' Around the ruins was nothing but sand.
Bergamot, as currently proposed, is hugely out of scale in every sense and will slow the already crawling traffic on our streets to near immobility. Emergency response times may drop. Look out onto Interstate 10 any weekday morning and watch the seemingly endless wait to enter already overdeveloped Santa Monica.
The crushing traffic and the oversized buildings, with apparently more to come, are monuments to certain council members, present and past, who believe more development is never enough. They are today's Ozymandias; look on their works, and despair.
Brian Bland
Santa Monica
