From the Mayor’s Desk: Planning for Carmel in a Changing Region

Over the last nine months, I’ve been meeting with mayors, councilpersons, and city managers across Monterey County, following neighboring council meetings, speaking at forums, and meeting with local businesses and residents. The message I’ve heard is clear: the regional landscape is shifting and it will affect us in Carmel. This situational awareness can help us plan rather than react to the impact of these changes.

The Regional Picture

Across the Peninsula and Salinas Valley, cities are advancing major hospitality, housing, retail, and infrastructure projects. New hotel rooms are coming online within a short drive of Carmel, some at the end of the year. Nearby communities are investing in utilities, transportation, housing, and public facilities to support growth, including an Amazon warehouse in Salinas. These commitments will reshape hiring patterns, travel choices, and visitor flows across Monterey Bay. These are not concepts, they are commitments already put in motion.

Why This Matters for Carmel

Carmel’s economy is built on hospitality. Hotels, restaurants, and small retail. About 1,000 new hotel rooms within 15 minutes will compete for guests and employees. Even modest shifts in occupancy or rates ripple through our lodging taxes and our budget is sensitive to those revenues. Even small changes in room nights matter. A tightening labor market and new housing far from here may also draw workers closer to home, raising costs and stretching schedules here.

What We Can Learn

Our neighbors are not trading away character; they are pairing it with practical planning. With more open land, they are diversifying revenue by inviting compatible investments. The takeaway is not to copy them, but to be intentional about protecting what makes Carmel distinct while staying competitive. For us, strategy means leveraging our advantage as the premier oceanfront destination while preserving village character.

Adopting a Strategic Posture

Strategic planning for Carmel means protecting the constants, our scale, walkability, and design traditions, while recognizing regional change is accelerating. One way is to think regionally and act locally by collaborating where shared services improve outcomes without changing our size, as our fire and ambulance partnership with Monterey shows. The goal is not to get bigger, it is to be more deliberate.

Leverage City Assets

Because we lack open land, we could leverage high-value city assets, especially downtown parking lots, to improve circulation and parking, support workforce housing and higher-value lodging, and guarantee long-term fiscal stability. Given today’s parking strains, we should look for solutions that improves, not worsens them. We could also expand our financial dashboard to stress test resilience to labor tightening and seasonal rate pressure, tracking a few metrics like parking availability, staffing vacancies, and occupancy and rates so we adjust early rather than react late.

How This Looks in Practice

Start with a citywide look at our assets and needs like parking pinch points, visitor flow, workforce pressure and identify sites that can improve our position. Then evaluate public, private, and public-private options against our constants like village scale, quiet operations, and design standards. Ideas that pass move to full public discussion, others are set aside, but all options should be presented and considered.

Moving Forward Together

Our goal should be to study the effects on Carmel of today’s regional realities and take prudent steps. Strategic planning does not commit us to projects but to clear priorities, tradeoffs, and protecting “Old Carmel” while keeping our economy resilient.

My commitment is to bring regional insights home so our decisions reflect local priorities and the broader context. If we take this approach now, we will have better choices later, and keep the charm we cherish on a stronger foundation. To hear a podcast generated from this column, go to cli.re/regional.

Dale Byrne, Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea

dbyrne@cbts.us