Word: ottenstein
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Maryland Developer Thomas Ottenstein has announced that he will open, probably this summer, his nearly completed 307-ft. observation tower at the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield. When historians, environmentalists and some townspeople expressed shock and consternation at his idea, Ottenstein insisted that the tower would be of considerable educational value and not detract from the hallowed battlefield ground. At a cost of $1.35 a person, the tower will permit observers a comprehensive view of the terrain where at least 7,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died and more than 33,000 were wounded in three days of battle...
...CENTURY after the Union Army turned back General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, the little southeast Pennsylvania town has degenerated into a tourist trap. Fried-chicken stands, ice cream palaces and motels clutter the surroundings of what Lincoln called consecrated ground. Two years ago, Maryland Entrepreneur Thomas Ottenstein announced plans to erect the most garish attraction yet: a modernistic 307-ft. observation tower overlooking the battleground, complete with $750,000 worth of audio-visual equipment to provide what Ottenstein calls a "classroom...
Pennsylvania Attorney General J. Shane Creamer, who calls it a "cash register in the sky," is fighting Ottenstein through the courts. Although Gettysburg has no zoning laws, Creamer bases his case on a recent state constitutional amendment intended to assure the citizenry of its right to "the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic virtues of the environment." He has called on such notables as Architect Louis Kahn and Historian Bruce Catton to testify on the state's behalf. County Court Judge John A. MacPhail recently turned Creamer down, however, ruling that "historical Gettysburg has already been raped...
...such assaults as the Disney scheme to turn California's Mineral King mountain fastness into a tourist development, or the perennial proposal to build a highway through the Grand Canyon. Anyone approaching the national battlefield military park at Gettysburg runs a gauntlet of gaudy billboards, and now Tom Ottenstein, a developer from Silver Spring, Md., is going ahead with plans to build a 300-ft. sightseeing tower on an acre of private land not far from the Gettysburg National Cemetery. It will be topped with a "space capsule" faced in tinted glass and blue enamel, on the doubtful theory...
...DAVID L. OTTENSTEIN Takoma Park...