As downtown falters, developer envisions New Monterey as future economic hub.

Developer Carl Outzen was somewhat startled to by a mundane scene: a kitchen table with a coffee mug and newspaper set out. “It looked like somebody turned the light off and then left,” he says. 


The lead headline on the yellowed April 6, 1971 edition of the Monterey Peninsula Herald read: “Council 4-1 To Take Over Urban Renewal Agency.” 


The irony isn’t lost on Outzen, a former Monterey city councilman, who discovered the decades-old, untouched residential scene this year while preparing to demolish eight decaying buildings in New Monterey to make way for a mixed-use development. 


He seems most fascinated by artifacts of daily living: years-old doorknob notices from California American Water; narrow bathrooms that appear to have been shared by numerous boarders in cannery housing; garages overflowing with rusty junk and old paint, and covered by creeping vines.


“Here it is, only a couple of blocks from downtown Monterey, and you see a piece of property like that – it’s strange,” Outzen says. 


He bought the property, a half-block chunk between Lighthouse Avenue and Foam Street at Dickman Avenue, for $800,000. He plans to invest roughly $6 million more to transform the condemned buildings into 32 upper-story apartments and about 8,000 square feet of commercial space


Outzen and architect Henry Ruhnke of Wald Ruhnke & Dost aim to submit plans to the city within two months. 


The first step was getting asbestos removed, and now Outzen’s working out arrangements with the Monterey Fire Department for training on the old buildings with controlled burns. The plan will call for additional water credits from the city. 


Outzen envisions Lighthouse as the hub of the city, and he’s already invested big in the neighborhood. He built the project now home to a Fed Ex, and also the Prime Fitness building.


He describes blocks of mom-and-pop shops as the future. “It’s a neighborhood-serving district,” Outzen says. 


But the lone tenant, Bob Gamber of The Vinyl Revolution record shop, doubts business owners like him can afford to stay. “I’m just going to try to hang on for as long as I can,” he says. He pays under $1,000 a month in rent, and hopes to stay at least until Jan. 1, when he hits his shop’s 20-year mark. 


The walls have come to serve as a living musical museum, covered in posters and album covers. “It’s like a history book of rock music,” Gamber says. 


Outzen’s also a partner with Doug Wiele of Foothill Partners, the Trader Joe’s shopping center developer, on a mixed-use development on Munras Avenue across the street from Peet’s Coffee and the transit plaza. 


To Outzen, who served on the Monterey Planning Commission when the Rec Trail and tourist-friendly Cannery Row came to be, New Monterey is more vital to the local economy: “You have more people come here in a day than come downtown in a whole year,” he says. 


But while Monterey Planning Chief Chip Rerig says he’s excited about Outzen’s forthcoming New Monterey proposal, which will remove buildings the city considers a liability as prospective fire hazards or squatters’ quarters, it’s not the economic engine the city needs. “Downtown is the heart of the city,” Rerig says.


He says so-called “catalyst sites,” with the potential to revitalize business citywide, are all nearer Alvarado Street: Regency Theater, the old Luxe Lounge (slated to become a restaurant with Baja Cantina ownership), the old bank building on Alvarado and Franklin, and Outzen’s Munras project.