The Viejo Carmel project was, however, the first-ever Lexor development to earn the company a Gold Nugget Award.

Hirschman acknowledges the award, given at this summer's annual Pacific Coast Builders' Convention in San Francisco, might not signify much to members of the general public. But to him, it's a rewarding experience just to be accepted into one of the four dozen categories in a competition with representatives from all facets of the building industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Washington and several countries along the Pacific Rim.

"Western designers [and] planners again showed us that they are among the nation's leading innovators, particularly with small-lot configurations and parking solutions," says Carolyn Weber, one of this year's Gold Nugget judges and a senior editor with Builder magazine.

That's just what Lexor did at the corner of Fourth and Junipero streets in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where the company began its Viejo Carmel project in the fall of 1999 and finished in mid-2002.

"We purchased the project about four years ago. It had been approved in the early 1990s as an apartment/condo development with a density of 40 units to the acre," says Hirschman, adding that the previous owner had "kept the permit alive" for several years by doing piecemeal work here and there, but never developed the property to its full potential.

When Lexor took over, Hirschman worked closely with the Irvine-based architectural firm McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners Inc., to produce a 20-unit residential complex that would, as Hirschman describes it, "fit into Carmel's hamlet-like setting seamlessly." The challenge was keeping that goal in mind while incorporating five cottage-scaled buildings containing 20 townhomes and apartments over a one-level, partially concealed subterranean garage.

"It's a pretty unique development. They're really intermixed; it's hard to tell an apartment from a townhouse. The project looks like it was built over time, by incorporating natural materials and several Monterey-type architectural styles," Hirschman says of the carefully planned French Tudor and Spanish Colonial accents.

Drought-tolerant trees and flowers that fit the character of the neighborhood were also part of the criteria, he adds, as was the use of recycled materials when possible, such as some tiles that once sat atop the old Town & Country Village and Agnews Hospital, two longtime San Jose venues that exist no more.

"The Gold Nugget is a huge award for builders in the Western United States. High-density projects like this one are especially hard to build and hard to make nice," he says. "Utilizing the remaining parcels we have, in a manner that's still aesthetically pleasing—we see this as the wave of the future."

Among Lexor Builders Inc.'s more local projects is a mix of single-family homes and townhouses on Los Gatos' Boyer Lane, just off University Avenue.