Carmel developer wants to annex, rezone old hospital site.

Bob Leidig strolls the downtown blocks of Carmel-by-the-Sea and identifies properties that his family owns. There’s the Village Corner, where he sipped his morning cappuccino; the Sharper Image shop, which used to be the Leidig Bros. Grocery Store; the Winters Gallery complex, which used to be a gas station; and the Court of the Fountains, which used to be a barn. His family has been in the area since his great-grandfather, John Martin, bought ranching land during the Gold Rush.

Now Leidig, an avuncular man in his late 60s, wants to expand his real estate kingdom in Carmel-by-the-Sea. The developer has asked the City to annex a 3.7 acre, trapezoidal-shaped property bounded by Valley Way and Highway 1—land he walked through on his daily trips to school as a kid, and where his grandson attended preschool.

If the powers that be approve the annexation, Leidig hopes to change the zoning so that he can remodel the abandoned Carmel Convalescent Hospital and build about 40 clustered condominiums. Although he’s asking for a high-density R-4 zoning designation, Leidig has agreed to limit the project to 45 units, a number that would hold for future property owners.

“We’re not gonna build anything that’s huge by any standard.”

“We feel our heritage is in Carmel-by-the-Sea,” says Leidig’s son Curtis, whose Leesburg, Virginia-based development company is working on the project. “We’re not gonna build anything that’s huge by any standard.”

But some Carmel residents—including homeowners on Upper Trail and Lower Trail, to the west of the hospital site—say that Leidig’s plan is too much for the neighborhood. During the comment period for an environmental study of the proposal, they submitted a stack of comments an inch thick, all of them in vehement opposition.