Pat,
You bring up excellent points.
All of them.There is little doubt somewhere down the line Golf got a really bad reputation for polluting the environment. Bad enough that common sense meant that a concrete & asphalt was a better environment then grass, plants, bushes and trees.
Later on, I'll try to get done here and get up to the 1st tee/driving range area and get a photo and post it. It's pathetic, but I'll be more then happy to post it.
But to answer your points:
Where the current mall is located, was a combination of multistructured parking and buildings, some of them two, three or four stories tall. What was demolished was more of a campus-like facility. Since this was a major redevelopment, including the building of the houses and golf course on land that had never been developed It was obvious that prime land right on the street would go to commercial development. What I don't understand, or simply can't fathom is why all of us live in a society that can't picture, let alone understand the importance of creating something original and unique. By that I mean to suggest the merging of the three entities. Housing, Commercial, Recreation and Natural Habitat and making them all harmonious with one another. it seems to work in the Home of Golf, and I see no reason why it couldn't have worked here either, mind you it's a place where two major thoroughfares meet--Beach Blvd. and Imperial Highway. Both highways can take you to the Pacific Ocean, while one of them takes you directly to LAX.
But to get more direct to the point, it took over two years to reshape the hillside into terraces for golf holes, or at least the basis for creating the homesites and golf holes. I can't remeber the exact figure, but the amount of earth moved to create this could be described as obscene. It destoryed land that should have been deemed ESA-protected. The permitting process was fast & sleek.
Where you really hit on the point Pat is where you ask why ESA's weren't preserved when the homes & streets were created.
My feeling on this is that it didn't even come into question, let alone was ever discussed--in terms of where everything went. However if you look due south of the housing, which would be the left side of the image, you can see these beautiful hills. those are the Western most portion of the Coyote Hills. At one time you could hear the coyotes crying at night. Further south of that is Los Coyotes Country Club, which partially rests on the famed McColl Toxic Waste Dump site, widely regarded as the site that created the term, "superfund." So these hills have been destroyed for years, both ruthlessly and needlessly.
Who was responsible?
Why of course, Standard Oil, which is now known as Chevron.
Currently the Coyote Hills is going through further battles, as developers, even in a market that is falling faster then a Led Zepplin to develop the last remaining hills, which from my viewpoint, given the amount of traffic we have here already, makes about as much sense as a bottomless boat. The infrastructure of the sewers, major energy concerns, roads schools and other essentials for sustaining life are pretty much taxed to their limits. However, there is talk of taking the site for the former Super K and splitting it up into more commercial properties, whcih I view as only a positive. We need more DVD/Video rental stores, a Staples Center to accomodate the Office Max and Office Depot, as well as another Rite Aid and Osco Pharmacies. The two down the street are filled-up to their limit in orders, drugging the people into more delusion.
For more information:
http://www.coyotehills.org/While the fight is more a city of Fullerton battle, this site is literally a 1/4 of a mile down the road.