SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Rob Lowe narrowly won approval from planners for a massive estate on his $8.5 million Montecito lot despite a neighbor’s complaint the mansion would spoil his panoramic ocean view.
The 42-year-old former star of “The West Wing” said he was pleased by the Montecito Planning Commission’s 3-2 vote.
The vote came after a daylong commission debate over whether the proposed 14,260-square-foot estate would overwhelm the Picacho Lane neighborhood.
Lowe’s proposal calls for a 24-foot-high privacy hedge that would screen the estate from neighbor Fred Gluck, former head of the international consulting firm McKinsey &Co. Gluck said the hedge would partially block views of the Pacific.
The complaint blossomed into a debate on the expanding size of Montecito homes.
Lowe noted that Gluck’s 8,577-square-foot home also exceeds Montecito guidelines for what planners call floor-area ratios.
Jane Goodall opposes monkey research plan
ATLANTA – Primate expert Jane Goodall and 18 other researchers sent a letter to federal officials urging them to oppose an Atlanta research center’s proposal to do AIDS-related research on sooty mangabey monkeys.
The letter urges the U.S. Fish &Wildlife Service to reject a request by the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, according to a copy filed with the government.
Scientists at the research center have nurtured a group of the primates, which are natural carriers of a form of the AIDS virus but don’t get sick from it, since the late 1960s. But federal officials listed them as endangered in 1988.
Yerkes officials are proposing helping conserve sooties in the African wild in exchange for permission to do AIDS-related research on captive sooties.
Federal officials have said such a trade-off has never before been permitted. In a letter dated June 19, Goodall and others say they hope it never is.
The letter said approving such a deal “could open the floodgates to future permit applications premised on allowing entities to kill or otherwise harm endangered species in exchange for making financial contributions to conservation programs.”
Associated Press
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