Stardust Memories

When Helen and Joe Ditte moved to the Fountain Valley community of Stardust in 1964, they were drawn by the soon-to-open UC Irvine nearby.

Two of their three children were already in high school, and the former Los Angeles residents had their eye on the UC system, though with some reservations.

“UCLA seemed to be such a big school,” said Helen Ditte, a former Huntington Beach Union High School District trustee who hoped her children would get more individual attention on a smaller campus. “We really had a dream that our son would go to UCI.”

More than three decades later, schools continue to draw new residents in the Dittes’ Stardust neighborhood in Fountain Valley. The 199-house development, one of the first tracts built in Fountain Valley, is in the southwestern corner of the city, bounded by Nightingale and Garfield avenues to the north and south and Magnolia and Santa Mariana streets to the east and west.

Unlike the Dittes, though, most newcomers today are focused on elementary schools. Newer residents are mainly families with young children, according to Steve Stovall, an agent with Century 21 Duncan in Garden Grove.

“They tend to be a younger family looking for stability [and] a nice, safe comfortable neighborhood to live in,” he said.

That describes Deborah and Keith Bramlett, who moved into their 2,500-square foot home in May 1999. The parents of 5-year-old Natalie and 19-month-old Jack needed extra room for their growing family and were seeking a strong neighborhood school.

They first chose Courreges Elementary and then went house-hunting in nearby neighborhoods, an order of events that doesn’t surprise Fountain Valley School District official Catherine Follett.

“Of all our elementary schools, Courreges has the highest test scores,” said Follett, an assistant superintendent. The school’s score on the state’s new Academic Performance Index is 877 out of a possible 1,000, more than 40 points higher than the next highest in the district.

The Bramletts had narrowed their choices to five homes in the area when they discovered a two-story five-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom home they liked.

“We had looked at every house that we could afford,” said Deborah Bramlett, a stay-at-home mom.

“We looked at this house and said, ‘We have to make an offer right now,’ ” she recalled. “Another couple came in, and we were in a bidding war by the end of the day.”

The Bramletts prevailed with a bid of $352,000, a few thousand dollars above the asking price.

It’s hard for some original owners to believe how much Stardust homes sell for today. When Jim Dick and his family bought in 1964, he paid $23,800 for the 1,300-square-foot three-bedroom house.

Dick, his wife, Doris, and their three children moved from Connecticut in hopes that the warmer climate would ease Doris’ arthritis pain. It was also her arthritis that led the couple to buy a Stardust home. All houses in the tract have hardwood floors, which Dick thought would be easier on his wife’s pained feet and legs than tile or linoleum over concrete.

There were other reasons the Dicks chose Stardust. Jim Dick, now a widower whose daughter lives with him, said the lot size in the tract--7,200 square feet--leaves plenty of room for gardens and children’s play areas.

Dick’s backyard is dominated by a massive ficus tree, one of the reasons he chose this particular house. “I wanted a climbing tree for my son, who was 3 years old at the time,” he said. “My son, my grandchildren and the neighbor’s children have all played in that tree.”

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More than 30 years later, children are still a vital part of the neighborhood.

“Kids still ride their bikes up and down their street,” said Stovall, himself a Fountain Valley resident, “and you stumble across an occasional kickball game or softball game on a summer afternoon.”

The tract houses, which feature decorative shutters, second-story balconies and traditional brick and stone accents, are not cookie-cutter creations. The neighborhood of tree-lined streets is a well-planned one, and residents are proud of living in a “master plan” community, according to Dick, a former Fountain Valley planning commissioner and the unofficial city historian.

Four years after it incorporated in 1957, Fountain Valley adopted a master plan of development, plotting the housing and commercial developments that slowly ate up the farmland on which lima beans, tomatoes and peppers had once flourished. The Stardust tract was finished before Fountain Valley’s City Hall and library buildings, which were dedicated in January 1965.

Today, starter houses are not cheap. According to Stovall, a 1,300-square-foot three-bedroom house sold recently for $242,000.

The standard model, which has an original floor plan of three bedrooms and two bathrooms but which can range from 1,800 to 2,200 square feet if it has additions, sells for about $330,000.

More expensive models, which are typically five-bedroom 1,800-square-foot homes, can sell for more than $430,000.

Pam Walker, her husband Richard Munde and their 11-year-old daughter, Juliet, moved into their Stardust home in July 1999. They paid $329,500 for their five-bedroom 2 1/2-bathroom home, and they believe they got a good deal.

“We got more house for the same money than we sold for in New York,” says Walker, a tutor and a teacher of special-needs students. “It’s on a quarter-acre. We went from a yard the size of a postage stamp to having this glorious yard.”

And the traffic is much easier to deal with than in Manhattan, she said. Munde, a software engineer for a Huntington Beach company, can get to work in 10 minutes.

Munde finds the commute a refreshing change from New York City, but longtime residents have noticed an increase in traffic in the neighborhood, even though Harper Elementary School, which used to bring a jam of parents’ cars to the Stardust tract every morning and afternoon, was closed in June 1984 and became Harper Park.

Newer residents remark that the park, which includes a set of brightly painted playground equipment, is an attraction, but most of the kids seem to stick closer to home.

“My daughter can play out in the street with her friends and ride bikes and skateboards,” Walker said.

“That southwest corner [of the city] is very quiet,” said Fountain Valley Police Department crime prevention specialist Leslie Potter. Of the four burglaries reported in that portion of Fountain Valley last year, none occurred in the Stardust neighborhood.

Helen Ditte enjoys watching the neighborhood children at play. “We would never dream of going to a senior community,” she said of herself and her husband. “We love being part of a more vibrant community. It’s wonderful to see the young families come out.”

Bramlett’s children are still too young to traipse about the neighborhood, she said, which is why she and her husband got them a wooden playground set for the backyard. And inside the house, the children have the playroom addition all to themselves.

“We love it,” said Bramlett. “The kids are in there, making a giant mess, and you don’t really have to look at it.”

Idyllic as it sounds, residents admit that the Stardust neighborhood is not perfect. The biggest complaint about the old-fashioned homes seems to be the old-fashioned layouts.

Bramlett, who moved to Fountain Valley from a brand-new Costa Mesa house, is particularly critical of her Stardust kitchen, which, with its Formica counters and small sink, has evidently not been remodeled in recent years.

Nor does she like the hardwood floors that so many other residents rave about.

“They’re cold, and they’re dirty,” she said. “You see every lousy piece of dust.”

Nevertheless, said Bramlett, “I’m glad we’re here.”

That sounds about right to Helen Ditte, though times have changed since she was the newest neighbor on the block.

“We all had a common interest: our children, our families, our new neighborhood and making everything work together,” she said, “and I think it’s still that way. This neighborhood has really been a gift to all of us.”

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Elisabeth Deffner is a freelance writer based in Orange.