Builder to Abide by Burial Ground Edict

The builder of a major housing project in Seal Beach has agreed to comply with a California Coastal Commission order to preserve Native American remains found at the site.

John Laing Homes will submit, within a week, a plan for handling the 22 sets of remains unearthed since July, a spokesman for the developer said Wednesday.

“I’m very optimistic that we can work something out,” said Steve Kabel, regional president of John Laing Homes, which plans to build 70 houses on 17 acres of the old Hellman Ranch off Seal Beach Boulevard.

The project was effectively put on hold this week by a unanimous vote of the state commission, which ruled that the area where the human remains were found constitutes a Native American cemetery and thus is a cultural resource requiring mitigation by the developer.

The company had argued that the remains were isolated and therefore less than culturally significant.

On Wednesday, however, Kabel said the developer was ready to comply with the commission’s order and would submit a plan offering several alternatives, including removing and reinterring the remains off site, leaving them undisturbed or moving them to a designated area within the project.

“We are giving serious consideration to setting aside a portion of the development for reburial,” Kabel said. “It’s really up to the parties involved to sit down and come up with a balanced, reasonable mitigation acceptable to everybody.”

Work was halted on the project in September after Native American monitors representing the Gabrielino-Tongva tribe protested the unearthing of the remains.

The state’s Native American Heritage Commission has designated members of that tribe as the most likely descendants of those buried at the site.

“We would very much like to find a solution that both [the developer] and the Native Americans can live with,” said Lisa Haage, the coastal commission’s chief of enforcement. “We would like to broker an agreement that makes sense.”