Oops… The discovery of hundreds of mysterious cogged stones and now human bone fragments that are up to 8,500 years old confirms decades-long rumors that the Brightwater Hearthside Homes site is an ancient burial ground of international importance, said Dave Singleton, a program analyst with the Native American Heritage Commission. http://www.ocregister.com/news/site-remains-developer-1988296-homes-commission

This might turn out to be another project like Coastline in SJC. Shuting down and selling off the model homes.

Maybe they can change the name to Backwater

who in their right mind would buy a million dollar home built on a burial site? i wonder if the buyer who already bought the house will have any rights to back out and get all their money back, or would they be force to sell at market price back to the builder?

wow that burial thing is crazy!!!!!!

i received the latest brightwater email today….

New Phase at The Cliffs & The Breakers

Early Release…Act Now!
Seven of the ten homes in Phase 1A of The Cliffs and
The Breakers sold immediately, and because of that overwhelming success, we’re releasing Phase 1B in advance of the Brightwater community Grand Opening on March 15th. This new offering includes four magnificent homes at The Breakers, two of which offer breathtaking ocean and wetlands views, and three gorgeous residences at The Cliffs. We’ll announce pricing on these homes this Thursday, February 28th, and if you wish to take advantage of this new opportunity, please plan on visiting us beginning Thursday, February 28th, to select your preferred homesite. Then on Sunday, March 2nd, please be ready to confirm your interest when we call you in the order of your priority. We look forward to making your dream of a new home at the beach come true this weekend with our second early release at The Cliffs and The Breakers at Brightwater.

I told you this land was cursed. But… oh… no… don’t listen to me, I’m just that crazy nutter, who doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to re-enforce my tin foil hat. I need to make it strong enough to protect me from falling knives, and arrows launched from pissed off Indian ghosts now.

Wait… wasn’t this the plotline from Poltergeist?
As someone who spent a great deal of his mis-spent youth in that area, I secretly hope the HBBB gets his house built. The area stinks to high heaven on warm days when the air is still, the traffic is going to always suck no matter where you want to go (especially in summer), any tsunami is going to flood his kitchen before it sweeps the house off it’s foundation, and by the way, did anyone bother to tell you that seawater has been pumped underground to fill the voids left by the oil extraction over the last 80 years? That area was left undeveloped because no one was willing to fight the environmentalists for land that was marginal at best. But, on my next trip down there, I’ll make sure I park my car in front of your house and wave as I make my way to the trails

I live a little less than a mile from Brightwater and I have to agree with Nude, a low tide and a hot day make for some fairly-overwhelming, sulphur and thiol-laden stentch. My biggest complaint about Brightwater, however, has got to be the lot size—just can’t get over how on-top of each other the houses were. Maybe it’s because I have a dog and kids, but I consider a yard a requirement and if I were paying over $1,000,000, it’d be a definite requirement. The model I went in wad nice enough, I suppose, but for $1M+ I expected more.

As far as houses built on ancient Indian burial ground, that’s just a plain bad idea: Poltergeist did not end well for anyone! And consider this, in Poletergeist hey had relatively small TV that caused transdimensional portal to be formed, energy blasts to emitted from it all kinds of other undersirable effects one doesn’t really want from ANY appliance. Just imagine the damage and havoc today’s 52-inch falt panels would wreak. Just something to think about….

On a related note:

Other unearthed Native American burial sites-
Upper Newport Bay: the remains of an estimated 600 ancient American Indians were dug up and reburied by the Irvine Co. in 1996. Homes were built on the site.

Hmmm…wondering how those homes are doing now????

Upper Newport Bay: the remains of an estimated 600 ancient American Indians were dug up and reburied by the Irvine Co. in 1996. Homes were built on the site.

Ironically, it smells like crap there too.

Just to clarify, so you’re saying bone fragments =  burial ground??!!

If so then you can include almost every coastal town in your definition of a burial ground- Newport , Newport Coast,  Corona Del Mar (Big Time), Seal Beach, San Clemente, All of Coastal Huntington. Anything built coastal is almost always going to come up with bone fragments, artifacts, fossils etc.  The difference now is that during grading local tribe members follow behind the equipment at every proposed new home community. That didn’t start happening until 4 or 5 years ago. How do I know?  I’ve been an offsite super for six major OC and LA builders since the late 70’s.
What they found at Brightwater was nothing compared to Seacliff HB, Seal Beach Heron Point and Newport.
Graphrix where do you live?  I’d be happy to tell you what’s under your home/condo/trailer. Don’t kid yourself - you don’t want to know.  Ignorance is bliss.

xan and ignor - thanks! the way some bloggers made it sound, i thought this was an isolated incident.

I didn’t say it was an isolated incident, and it does happen all the time. There was a project in Atscadero, that was delayed for the same reason. I suggest you read the articles, and you will see this was not some ordinary bone fragments being found. There was a lot more found than just bones.
The land was once shared by the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians and Gabrieleno-Tongva, Singleton said. In addition, he said, the site was possibly a ceremonial area. The 400 cogged stones found in and around the site are considered ceremonial objects by both tribes and were buried with the deceased, he said.
Ignorance is bliss alright, good thing I am not the ignorant one.
Damn, you Hearthside Homes/Cal Coastal people are really desperate to defend this project. Having trouble with sales are you?
Thanks for all the bullish enlightenment, but you can keep your 30 year old, smelly, too high of density, overpriced, cursed, flood zoned project to yourself. Or, the new builder that takes it over when you go BK. 2009 is going to be here before you know it, better hurry and make those sales to make that payment. Oh… that is right, you need these sales, because it is all you have to make a payment that large. Hold on, I will call the old execs at Koll so we can laugh together.
I thought it was pathetic, that TIC was visiting us, but you guys bring a whole new level to desperation, and a serious lack of professionalism. Good luck with the project. You want to sell homes? L O W E R the P R I C E!

Been drinkin’ graph?

LOL, no… studying. It lowers my tolerance/patience just the same.
Oh… now I know why we have all these people defending this project… I did a google search, and damn… what do you know, this thread is #3.
Good thing Merrill and some hedgies stepped in to buy some common stock for pennies, yes, literally pennies, otherwise the cash may run dry.
Gotta love being a public company, not only can I smell the desperation, but I can see it.
Hell, the CEO, has been around since the Koll/Bolsa Chica Company/Henley Properties days, and he knows the book value. So, sell the homes, and get this 30 year old ordeal over with already. 9 homes sold, and 7 pre-sold, looks like they need to sell some more to make that debt payment.

Not that I can afford these homes to began with, but why would someone want to buy a house on a burial ground. Bad bad bad luck.

I gamble recreationally.  Specifically, I play tournament poker.  I can tell you that there is no such thing as good luck or bad luck.  There is something called variance.

The earth has been around a very long time.
See 1491, the book.  The populations of Native Americans was much higher than previously estimated.  And they were here a good long time.  Time for lots of them to be dead and buried.  Prolly it would be difficult to find someplace you could be sure that nobody was dead and buried in, even if it was 10,000 years ago.  And that’s just people.
What do you think dirt is made of anyway?  Decomposed organic material mixed with sand or clay or rocks.  That is, dead animals and plants.  We are all, in the long run, recycled.  This is not bad.  You wouldn’t want dead stuff to not rot, right?
In countries that have been heavily populated for thousands of years, like, say, China, you probably can’t find anyplace where there hasn’t been a burial ground at some point or other.

That’s it…I am not going to buy any houses. Not that I can’t afford anything anyway with this interest rate keeps going up and up and price haven’t drop that much.

I hated these MLS description….“Motivated seller…want to sell fast”....then drop the dam price.

I read some of Pat Veling’s post over at the OCR this morning.  He made a plug for his data.
Most of it was totally garbage and unactionable.  But I got one little gem - $ per SF on listed vs in escrow vs backup offers vs (a couple of others).
On average, the listed price was about 10% higher than the closed price.  Consider we are going down 1-2% every month, you think some of these sellers would grow a brain, but NAH that would require them to think and that’s never been required.

We saw a TH listed in Westminster for $ 579K…they drop it down to $ 449K. My agent told me their new listing price is firm….since they have already drop the price. Hello people…..that is still $ 320 per sq ft.

Correction- it is $ 326 per sq ft. DOM is only 5 months.

The sister can’t quite believe her ears…. or eyes in this case!  So many of the people on this blog seem to live in such a small bubble.  It’s a combination of “NIMBY” (not in my back yard-this type of person just wants to have the freedom to live wherever THEY want, but control anyone else from living where they choose) and ignorant ramblings from people who don’t have the drive or capacity to own their own real estate.  Some of you are getting wrapped up in ridiculous issues.  The bare “bones” basics are that YES, this is SACRED land—-formerly occupied by people who had an appreciation for the beauty of the location and the bounty that nature could provide for food & shelter, in this location.  It is an HONOR for new settlers to choose this same location for many of the same reasons.  So if our honorable predesessors not only lived on this land, but also died on this land… so be it.  This is the natural process of living… I personally know that ‘dem bones of our various predecessors (Native Americans, Mexicans, Spaniards, Brits, French…. and on and on…. and on…..) are buried all over this beautiful planet, NOT always at organized little “cemetaries” like “Crown Hill” or “Forest Lawn” or “Rose Hill”... or in fancy, satin lined, chrome blinged boxes!!!  Burying our dead in this way is not something that we’ve always done…no matter what your bloodlines are!  Many, many, many peoples and cultures bury their dead in as many different ways… behind the tepee, out in the “back forty,” underneath the old oak tree…. out in the battlefield next to the river… WHATEVER.  The dignity of a person’s life SHALL NOT be defined by who finds the bones in later years and what happens to them!  End of story.  Live lightly on this land wherever you have the good fortune to be able to…. be it BRIGHTWATER… Newport Coast, Seacliff, The Tides, Tustin, Garden Grove, Placentia….. WHEREVER!!!!  What lies beneath isn’t always known…. respect the land that you have and allow others to make their own choices.

This will sound like a "tall tale" but way back when in the 80’s I was with a developer and we found 2 pre historic remains on a parcel we were developing in Hemet. The tribe, (for a price), allowed us to move one set of remains to the location of the other set and they did a "reburial" ritual to allow this to occur. Both sets of remains ended up on lot 13!
With proper disclosures we sold that lot along with the remains as well as restrictions on no pools in a certain area of the lot. It was a large lot with a view and we sold it at a premium. This is really old news within the development community.
Finding of remains, artifacts, or some history of previous dwellings on raw land is no big deal and happens often. There are rules and directives for the mitigation of this situation. It usually requires paying a fee to some group. Some times it is disclosed and sometimes it is not.
There is usually a good reason that people have choosen to live in a certain area from pre historic time and usually means that the area has natural amenities tomake it sought after.
Regards
 

Geez…. either we really do have Hearthside homes employees defending this project, or one of the 9 owners, er bagholders is defending this project. First HB Big Turd yells at us that we can’t afford it, now he/she changes his/her name, and preaches to us to respect the land. My gawd, these people are desperate.