I know that this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, and I’m okay with that. But for the life of me I can’t see what the big deal is with the idea of the Hat Mansion being torn down and replaced with a housing tract.When I first learned that the house was going to be razed and possibly replaced with high-density single-family homes – it’s important to make the single-family home distinction – my first thought wasn’t about a local “landmark” leaving the rural Manteca skyline, but rather which young family I knew would be able to buy a house in a community they love after believing for years that they had been priced out.Manteca’s NIMBY contingent shot that possibility down in fine fashion earlier this month, but the fact still remains that somebody is going to do something with that property that involves building houses (maybe not though – more on that later) and ultimately that will mean that the Hat Mansion as we have come to know it will cease to exist. I must say that those that are declaring the house a “landmark” aren’t completely off-base – it used to be fun to try and spot the 28,000-square-foot house when coming down the Altamont on a clear day, and the speculation about who was building the house as it was going up was tremendous fun.