Wild rivers is open for 2 more years

[DisneyFan28]

Wild Rivers lease extended for 2 more summers | park, wild, rivers, irvine, water - News - OCRegister.com

[CoasterMatt]

Yay!

[DisneyFan28]

Originally Posted by CoasterMatt

Yay!

its kinda weird since that despite the fact that it hasnt been updated in 10 years(last update was July 1999), thats its still a popular park.

[sir clinksalot]

Why do they keep going through this every year. First it was supposed to close what, 5 years ago. Then 4, 3, 2, last year. Let's just give the park a new long-term contract, forget this charade that it's going to close. They aren't going to build houses there, not in 2 years, not in 10 years.

[DisneyIPresume]

Originally Posted by sir clinksalot

Why do they keep going through this every year. First it was supposed to close what, 5 years ago. Then 4, 3, 2, last year. Let's just give the park a new long-term contract, forget this charade that it's going to close. They aren't going to build houses there, not in 2 years, not in 10 years.

Actually, they had started grating the area and preparing it to put in houses close to two years ago. It's just that you can't see it because it is behind where Wild Rivers is. You can easily see this area if you go north on Laguna Canyon Road. It is to the east just before it turns into Hwy 133.

For quite some time bulldozers and heavy equipment were going in and out of this area but this immediately stopped when the mortgage crisis hit. What was left were grated hillsides stripped of their natural plantlife. Now, well over a year after this happened, you can still easily see this stripped down patch of land. It is quite depressing.

So we can thank the mortgage crisis for saving Wild Rivers, at least temporarily.

Once the economy starts getting better, they will continue working on that housing tract. I am hoping that it gets scaled down and Wild Rivers gets saved. But in all honesty I think it won't be around after 5 years maximum.

[sir clinksalot]

There are SO many empty houses right now, I don't really think you are going to see a building boom like we saw the past few years. At least not until people forget about the lessons they "should" have learned from this crisis.

The reason so many houses were being built was because pretty much ANYBODY could get a mortgage loan, even without verification of income. That's not going to happen again.

[DisneyIPresume]

Originally Posted by sir clinksalot

There are SO many empty houses right now, I don't really think you are going to see a building boom like we saw the past few years. At least not until people forget about the lessons they "should" have learned from this crisis.

The reason so many houses were being built was because pretty much ANYBODY could get a mortgage loan, even without verification of income. That's not going to happen again.

I totally agree, Clinks. This area is still fenced off though, which to me indicates that the developer still owns the land.

I really hope that by the time the housing economy picks up either this project will be scrapped entirely or that it will get majorly scaled back. I'm with you in that we are no longer going to see housing sell like it did during the boom. But this area is in a good location -- close to the businesses in the Irvine Spectrum -- so these houses might wind up selling fairly well once the economy gets back on track.

Let's just hope after everything is said and done that Wild Rivers doesn't wind up getting impacted by all of this.