Joan Rivers, Two Ponds

I watched a great documentary last week on Joan Rivers. I was a kid in the 1980s so I didn't really know (or care) who she was until I heard an interview with her on NPR a few months ago. I'd assumed she was just your standard boring, obnoxious celebrity, but man, is that lady hilarious! Well, I guess she is obnoxious. But I love that sort of crude, self-deprecating sense of humor. She never fails to make me blush and giggle.

Anyway, I remembered seeing something in The Intelligencer archives on Rivers suing a newspaper (I thought it was The Intell, though it turned out to be the Philadelphia Daily News) for libel. To me, libel (and even more so, slander) has always seemed a sort of weird, antiquated reason to take someone to court. I mean, what are you hoping to achieve?

Anyway, it turns out that in May 1983, Rivers and a developer named Tom Pileggi once had a plan to create a whole new borough in Northampton Township.

The borough, called Two Ponds, was planned at Almshouse and Jacksonville roads on an 87-acre tract of farmland. The plan ultimately failed, but I can only imagine the drama it must have elicited.

From a 1986 Inquirer article:

Instead of single-family homes, as intended in the township's zoning plan, the development would offer a 36,000-square-foot movie studio and sound stage, a nine-hole golf course, jogging path, health spa, tennis courts, swimming pool and 15 buildings with a total of 300 condominiums. The price per unit: $100,000 to $1 million.

I dug out these Intelligencer articles, too. Click 'em to read 'em.