Some people wonder what all the fuss is about at Rossmoor. Why are people so upset? A few pictures tell the story. The old Stanley Dollar home is now a clubhouse with beautiful bones and intimate spaces. The surrounding landscape is lovely with heritage oak trees and an emerald green oval lawn in front that is graced by a necklace of flowering crab apple trees that reach full bloom at this time of year. The design of the hide-and-reveal landscape is thoughtful: as you approach from Stanley Dollar Drive, you can barely see the house. As you turn into the driveway, the meandering path affords varying views of the crab apples that form an alle, the magnificent heritage oak trees that are all between 100-300 years old (a 300 year old oak tree is rare and was a seedling at the time George Washington was president) and the grassy green slopes of the golf course. As you travel along, each view is different and eventually you come to the house, a 1930's Cape Cod-style cottage. It is a place where residents hold weddings, memorials, birthday parties, have meetings, poker games and chess. The spaces are charming and intimate. The place has character. Building a huge box of an event center that is in the style of a Wyoming hunting lodge just does not fit the nature of this place. The lawn and crab apple trees will be replaced with a parking lot and that parking lot will pave over the roots of the heritage oaks, thus endangering their shallow root systems. This is a travesty and 3600+ residents are grieving and upset to lose this beautiful spot.
