Renovation to recapture Carmel Mission Inn’s original spirit

[...] its new owner has begun a major renovation that should give the 165-room hotel some star appeal, with a style that looks back — somewhere between “Mad Men” and that early Ford movie “American Graffiti” — as much as forward.

A few years later, the Barnyard Shopping Village and Crossroads Carmel shopping centers bracketed the hotel, and the Carmel Mission Inn gained a bit of notoriety as a place for discreet assignations by the frisky Bay Area set.

Today, the garden-fringed hotel still books up quickly for major events such as the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the Big Sur Marathon, which finishes across the street, Buescher noted.

The pool area has already been updated with mod Saarinen tables, Bertoia chairs, futon beds and flat chaise longues sporting bright cherry and marigold pillows.

Room renovations — including a redesign of the narrow bathrooms and the addition of patios to ground-floor rooms — start Jan. 20 and should wrap up by mid-April, according to Michael Hraba of Waterford Hotels & Inns, the hotel’s new management company.

On a recent tour of the model room, Stevenson proudly pointed out retro-hip touches such as an Eames chair, a vintage green leather tuffet (spotted at a thrift store by designer Mary Ann Schicketanz), custom-made Danish modern furniture and a turquoise Crosley clock radio with ’60s lines but a digital display.

Floating shelves on a backlit concrete wall framed the platform bed, which faced one of the concessions to current tastes: a large flat-screen TV.

A framed ’60s California road map hung on the wall, while an assortment of reproductions of colorful postcards lay on the sleek dresser, which also hid the mini-fridge and safe.

Once the rooms are done in April, a major redesign of the public areas will begin, creating a newly visible entrance and airy lobby, a fitness center that overlooks the pool, and a large outdoor lounge with a giant screen and pizza oven — “the type of place that would have had 200 people in it, had it been ready when game seven of the World Series was on,” Stevenson added.

The Carmel Heritage Society’s annual Inns of Distinction Tour provides a festive way to peek at a variety of lodgings, with refreshments at local restaurants and wine tasting rooms.