Too rich for Carmel? Billionaire developer slams city over delays

Patrice Pastor spent big bucks on Carmel-by-the-Sea, in part because of cherished childhood memories, vacationing with his father in this charming, if quirky, coastal town.

- BY HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS

Photographs by GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times SHOPPERS and visitors at the Der Ling Building, one of the properties billionaire Patrice Pastor has purchased in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

But after snapping up more than $100 million in properties in the area in recent years, the Monaco billionaire has grown increasingly infuriated by delays on his development projects, including a midsize retail and residential development that he has been trying to get approved.

After six years of holdups and redesigns on that project —due, he said, to townsfolk endlessly nitpicking his plans — he has decided to bail on Carmel.

“It’s time to leave this strange community, if you can call it a community,” Pastor said in a statement after the City Council this month delayed taking any action on the development, which he named the JB Pastor project in honor of his great-grandfather.

City officials, he wrote, have used “reasons that are akin to a schoolyard” to stand in his way, and it is time, he said, to “reconsider my investment in Carmel.”

In Carmel-by-the-Sea, development — including upgrades to private homes — is notoriously slow.

This wealthy Monterey County enclave strictly regulates architecture to maintain the much-vaunted “village character” of a place filled with cottages, courtyards and secret passageways.

Residents in the one-square mile town, population 3,200, have long sought to keep out the so-called trappings of city life.

PATRICE PASTOR bought Cabin on the Rocks, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Some townspeople view his purchases with suspicion.

They have no street addresses, instead giving their homes whimsical nicknames like Almost Heaven and Faux Chateau. And they have no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas.