By Andrew Pridgen : sfgate – excerpt

Dee Borsella makes pajamas. She draws up patterns, cuts the fabric and sews her creations right in the back of her Carmel store. People come from all over to purchase her custom bedtime ensembles. She has her regulars from New York, LA and even London. But she likes it best when people are walking by and happen to spy a pretty set in the window. She loves to talk sleepwear. And that’s all she would ever talk about, if she had the chance.

But for the past six years, the first thing people say when they step through the threshold of Ruffle Me To Sleep is: “What’s with the hole in the ground?”

“It’s become …” she pauses mid-thought for a moment as she readies to close, “more than a distraction, a fixture? It’s, ‘What’s going on across the street? What’s going on across the street?’”…

Enter a billionaire heir from Monaco

The project proposal, unanimously approved on Aug. 9 by Carmel’s Planning Commission after three years of back-and-forth with the developer, includes 14 shops with more than 9,000 square feet of retail space, along with a dozen one- and two-bedroom apartments.

The buildings are designed to adhere to Carmel’s 30-foot height limit and to the architectural lineage of Carmel, as something of a greatest hits of the town’s traditional styles. The renderings feature a mishmash of Contemporary Craftsman, Spanish Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Final approvals and permits, along with a groundbreaking date, have not yet been set, but according to developer Esperanza Carmel’s website, “We are now able to proceed to the next stage of the planning process.”…(more)