Even among the property speculators of questionable scruples — and billionaires with next to none — that call Monaco home, Patrice Pastor stood out.
A little over three years ago, an adviser to Prince Albert, who rules over the principality, offered an unvarnished view of the developer, giving him a nickname that has stuck ever since. “That octopus Pastor is everywhere,” wrote Nicolas Saussier in an e-mail, according to Le Monde. “He has gotten his hooks into Monaco. He has gone mad, he has no limits.”
Fast-forward to today and Pastor, 50, has moved on to a place that resembles Monaco in almost no respect. In Carmel-by-the-Sea, on the rugged Pacific Coast of California, he is once again upsetting the order of things.
Locals in a town that once had Clint Eastwood as its mayor say the Monégasque is on a buying spree, spending tens of millions of dollars since 2015. He has bought more than a dozen properties in the town of 3,200 people, including spending $22 million last year on a Frank Lloyd Wright home and $7.5 million recently on the prominent La Rambla building.
Pastor, chairman of JB Pastor & Fils, is the talk of a town where picture-book cottages, with names like Hansel and Gretel, still lend the place a quaint air.
Though the billionaire insists his intentions in Carmel are pure, residents are not so sure, portraying him as a larger-than-life villain.
His purchases are being discussed in WhatsApp groups and on social media, while in Carmel’s art galleries, bakeries and coffee shops the gossip is about little else. Wild rumors portray Pastor as a ruthless businessman who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Some even note that when he bought a property in Monaco, it was said to have been “Pastorized”.
Paranoia has taken hold, with his critics saying they wish to remain anonymous in fear of “reprisals” for speaking out. Pastor could easily buy out their landlords and evict them, they say. For example, at one shop, its owner feared your correspondent was a “secret agent” sent from Monaco in disguise, notepad and all.
One resident and business owner, who has been in Carmel for generations, dreads Pastor taking another bite out of the town, fearing a permanent change to its character. “Ego, arrogance, entitlement,” he said. “That is exactly what is going on here. He wants to be a big fish in a small pond. I think he thinks he is smarter than the rest of us here in ‘little old Carmel’.”
Though the billionaire insists his intentions in Carmel are pure, residents are not so sure, portraying him as a larger-than-life villain.
Yet speaking to your correspondent, Pastor insisted his interest in Carmel was no fleeting affair. “I first came … as a young child and, as with most people’s first visit, fell in love,” he said. “I knew one day I would have a home there.”
He conceded that over the past decade he had been buying “a small number of properties” but added that he was “not a major landowner”. He said there were many people with “far more properties than me”.
That is unlikely to appease residents who fear change in a town that has retained its character despite a number of famous homeowners, including Brad Pitt, who has a $40 million cliffside property nearby.
Though the days when Carmel was a bohemian colony filled with writers, poets and artists have long gone, there is little showy about life here. “He is going to raise real estate prices and people won’t be able to afford to live here,” one resident said. “He is going to make it a playground for the rich and famous and push everybody else out.”
Money talks in California, and locals fear for the future of what is still a relative backwater. One business owner and lifelong Carmel resident said: “If he wanted to buy this place and turn it into apartments I’d have nowhere to go.”
Scott Bogen, 62, who works at the Carmel Bay Company, a shop on Ocean Avenue, the heart of the town, said many longtime inhabitants feared change. He said the prevailing attitude of those who lived in Carmel is “I have got mine and I don’t want anyone else to have it”.
Tracie Finch, 64, another local, defended Pastor, while acknowledging she carries out landscaping work for his properties. He has bought “diamonds in the rough”, she said, and is “updating them beautifully”.
Pastor said that those who did not know him, “don’t understand my intentions”, citing numerous attempts to reach out to locals.
However, the business owner who accused Pastor of “being up to no good” fears that, short of the 93-year-old Eastwood riding to the rescue, Carmel is at the mercy of a foreign billionaire. “I don’t think anybody can do anything,” he conceded, with a resigned sigh. “It’s a free country, after all.”
Keiran Southern is the West Coast correspondent for The Times of London