Carmel Valley RV park owner upgrading to mini cabins on wheels.

A couple words that come to mind when looking at the two new cabins at Saddle Mountain Ranch are “cute” and “cozy.” Each 400-square-foot unit includes a bedroom, sleeping loft, bathroom, kitchen, living space and tiny front porch.

What doesn’t come to mind is “RV.” And that’s where the permitting questions crop up at the 8.5-acre RV park and campground, with 80 adjacent acres, at the end of Schulte Road in Carmel Valley.

Property owner Howie Hugo, the Shoreline Community Church pastor who also owns the Jensen Camp mobile home park in Cachagua, says the cabins, known as “park models,” are classified as recreational vehicles because they can be towed.

But he has no plans to move the ones at Saddle Mountain, where the cabins are nestled among trees, their wheels obscured. He’s planning to fill more RV spots with the park models, which he rents to vacationers at $195 per night.

“They look like cute little cabins,” Hugo says. “For every one of these we bring in, we take an RV off the street.”

Several of Saddle Mountain’s neighbors are less enthusiastic.

“FOR EVERY ONE OF THESE CABINS, WE TAKE AN RV OFF THE STREET.”

Debora Raymond, who lives just down Schulte Road from the park, says her concern isn’t with the cabins’ design, but rather with their potential scale. She worries Hugo will install more park models – and possibly long-term tenants to live in them – generating more traffic on the narrow one-lane road.

“We’re going to have people driving up and down the road instead of an RV that comes up, stays for the weekend and leaves,” she says.

Hugo’s cabins represent a bit of an oversight puzzle, as both the Monterey County Planning Department and California Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) are involved in the permitting.

HCD spokesman Eric Johnson says the state’s role is to ensure the health and safety of mobile home park residents. Last December a neighbor alleged Hugo was reconfiguring sites without permits, but an HCD inspector closed the complaint in May, finding no violations.

Without permits, Johnson says, Hugo can only put park models on the 25 Saddle Mountain lots with drains. If he wants to install additional cabins on his other 25 lots, without drains, he’ll have to seek County Health Department permits for a holding tank and pump rig.

Hugo says that while he has no expansion plans, he’s met with county planners to discusss things like electrical upgrades. “We’re not trying to do something that’s not permitted,” he says.