Why are aesthetics ignored so often?

One can't speak for all developers of commercial or residential property but so often it seems they ignore the aesthetic impact of their efforts on the surrounding neighborhood.

In particular, I am referring to a new condominium and housing development on the former Beyond Hope Trailer Park site. Already many 50- to 100-year-old trees have been removed in preparation for construction of roads and homes. Unfortunately, homes on the backside of Sun Ray Estates no longer have a forest on the rear side of their backyards. They are utterly gone. Apparently the developers neglected the enjoyment of nature, privacy and the beauty their trees lent to these homeowners. Not that the site plan had to incorporate any consideration for the consequences of such a tree clearing, but whatever happened to preserving the reasons why so many people moved here in the first place?

Why couldn't they have left a 10- to 15-foot line of trees between the Sun Ray Estates homeowners and the impending new construction? Wouldn't a few majestic trees left in strategic areas around the proposed road and "storage units," etc., have been a welcomed landscape feature? Was their site design so restricted that every square foot had to be cleared? That's recent history. Now, I would appeal to a sense of responsibility and action that would mitigate the impact of what has already been done. Perhaps the developers could build a berm and plant a couple of barrier rows of blue spruce along its top. There would be a modicum cost involved but the relative good it would do seems worth the expenditure.

I am not a Sun Ray Estates land owner but live nearby and abhor the clearcutting methods often used in construction when the natural growth might have been saved and used to enhance the future development.

DAVID SCHERB

Hope