“This is what FIRST feels like,” proclaimed the full-page ad promoting Providence Point, an environmentally damaging and congestion-producing retirement community once known as Crystal Spring (The Capital, Oct. 13).

Do they mean first to feel what it is like to watch as towering trees are felled in the old-growth forest where the Lutheran church wants to build this wrong-headed development? Or do they mean first to stand in a long line of cars waiting to exit the property onto two-lane Spa Road, then first to stand in another line to get onto Forest Drive, and then — with luck — to be the first vehicle to make it to the next stoplight?

Or perhaps they simply want to be first to the banks of already degraded Crab Creek, where they can watch as even more sediment runs off the land from where trees once grew and birds and other wildlife have managed to survive in our increasingly urban environment.

I, for one, would like to be the first one who congratulates the City of Annapolis for stopping this unnecessary and unwanted development. That, as the ad proclaims, would be “The Thrill of a Lifetime!”

JOHN W. FRECE, ANNAPOLIS

Link to Original Article