Posts

Update 10/21/24

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Elaine de Man LTE 1022/24: Don't be fooled by Measure B
Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat LTE 10/8/24: Reject special treatment for developers

Update 8/21/24

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SH Star 8/21/24: Thompson calls for 'public discussion' on impacts of St. Helena hotel plan

Update 7/6/24

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SH Star 8/6/24: Committee forms opposing St. Helena hotel initiative

Update 6/28/24

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SH Star 6/26/24: St. Helena City Council passes hotel initiative to voters

Update 6/19/24

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SH Star 6/19/24: St. Helena City Council faces crucial vote on hotel initiative

On 6/25/24 the St Helena City Council will be voting to either immediately adopt the St. Helena Resort developer's St. Helena Agritourism Initiative or to place the initiative on the November 5 ballot for approval or denial by the city's residents. The project is being developed by Peter Mondavi's Krug WInery, and Noble House Hotels and Resorts (owner of the WIne Train).

The Initiative is an attempt to make an end run around any meaningful environmental review on a major tourism project. Appproval of the Initiative by either the council or the voters will void the requirement that the project comply with the procedures of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The developer threatens to forgo any voluntary community improvements that might be expected to grease the skids of an immediate city approval should city council members choose the initiative path. If the Initiative is put on the ballot, the developer is betting on being able to convince the small number of St. Helenans that the many additional transient residents, and commuting employees are more in their interest than the reduction in the small town quality of life that the increased population and traffic will bring.

The city should not give in to developers' strong arm tactics. And St. Helena citizens should not be fooled into believing that increased tax revenues will make up for the loss of small town livability that tourism is continuing to compromise.

This should be a no-brainer. The project needs to go on the ballot so that St. Helenans can decide if they want another major tourist attraction in town. And hopefully they will reject the initiative so that an objective environmental review that involves the interests of the entire community has time to play itself out.

While the developer's Agritourism Initiative nominally is tailored to the specifics of the Krug site, the concept of the "Winery and Planned Agritourism Overlay" establishes a precedent that will be widely pushed in the county to move beyond restaurants and events now allowed at wineries to allow hotels as well. No longer will it be just an event center next door that residents have to confrontt, but a hotel and conference center as well. There are ever larger players moving into Napa Valley resort entertainment. Unless there is more resistance, it is only a matter of time before the winery resorts dominate the landscape in the way that casino resorts dominate Las Vegas, and wine country will become one big wine-dine-and-recline city.

3/14/24

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NVR 3/114/24: Developers want St. Helena voters to determine fate of Wine Train/Charles Krug hotel

The developers have obviously made the calculation that it's much easier to bamboozle a majority of the small number voters in St. Helena with campaign ads, than to comply with public ordinances and state environmental review. The price of deciding the future of a place by the amount of TOT promised is that the town will eventually be owned by the tourism industry, while residents that just want to live in a real community will be priced out or will sell out.

Every major tourism project has impacts to traffic, water resources, workforce infrastructure and overall quality of life that affects more than just the residents of one town, and those residents should also have a forum to voice their concerns and have them weighed. The desire of the few to hasten their return on investment should not be a priority in urbanization projects that will change the lives of the many forever. A thorough public planning review process insures that every impact is vetted.

If the initiative is successful it will set an obvious precedent for every other project in the pipeline at both the city and county level, to circumvent the regulations that for the last 50 years have hindered the urbanization of the county into a Las Vegas of wine.

10/12/23 Original Post

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NVR 10/12/23: St. Helena hotel proposal at Charles Krug Winery to be revealed Oct. 25

As we have seen in the last several years, the first proposals are now being realized for the development of hotels designed to extend the hospitality functions, and brand associations, of wineries into lodging. The propossed Hall Winery Hotel, Inn at the Abby, and The Farmstead Hotel are each being developed by wine corporations on properties adjacent to their wineries. We now have the corporation that owns the wine train partnering with Charles Krug in this next phase of the complete absorption of Napa's agricultural economy into the umbrella of its tourism economy.

As wineries have continued to morph into restaurants (after changes to the Winery Definition Ordinance in 2010), lodging is the next logical step in what can only be envisoned as a transition to a Las Vegas of Wine. As noted in our article here, tourism revenues in Las Vegas rose above gambling revenues in 1999 and the ratio has steadly increased since. In 2023, gambling revenues were at $8 billion. Tourism revenues were at $44 billion. Right now the ratio of tourism to wine sales in Napa County are at parity, much like Las vegas in 1999: $2.2b billion in tourism and $2.3 billion in wine. It is obvious why the corporate wine industry wants to get into hotels. There's much more money yet to be made from the Napa brand than the limited acreage of Napa grapes can possibly generate.

All of the corporations proposing winery hotels at this point are well known major players with the capital, caché and political muscle to put into hotel development. And all of the hotel properties, though adjacent to agriculturally zoned winery buildings, are not on agriculturally zoned lands, and hence can be developed under existing zoning. But it's just a matter of time before the 500-1000 other wineries now in the county feel they are being dissed by being denied the source of the new money to be made here from full-on agritourism. Already the county has given budding, but less plutocratic, entrepreneurs a small-winery ordinance and a micro-winery ordinance to boost their dreams of tapping into the wine-tourism economy. Demands for winery B&B's are sure to follow.

The County General Plan is coming up for amendment in the next year. There will undoubtedly be pressure once again to modify the definition of agriculture to allow ever increasing types of tourism to fit within the ag zoning designations so that politicians and entrepreneurs can proudly claim that they support agriculture as they turn what's left of the bucolic Napa Valley into an un-charming, high-rise, congested, urban money machine.

Update 4/5/24

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NVR 4/4/24: More rooms: Napa City Council approves updated designs for Oxbow hotel

Update 4/1/24 A bad decision made worse

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NVR 4/1/124: Updated Oxbow hotel plan to go before Napa City Council
Staff Agenda Letter and Documents
Comments by Napa Housing Coalition , Etc.

Following the City Planning Commission's Feb. 1 approval of the reconfiguration of the hotel, previously called the Foxbow Hotel, to be more salable to a mass-market hotel chain, the project goes before the City Council on Apr 2nd 2024. A project that was an eyesore barrier between downtown and the Oxbow Market becomes an even greater barrier with the elimination of any public serving facilities for two blocks on 1st Street. It is a change made solely to accommodate the bottom-line calculation of a mass-market hotel chain (that may even sell the project to an even lower grade owner, if history is a guide) with no regard to the public service aspect that any building project permitted in the city's commercial center should serve. The planning commission was very unwise to approve this building in the first place and doubly unwise to approve the revision. The city has failed miserably in creating the guidelines for the integration of the Oxbow District with the rest of the town.

Again look at the rendering. Together with the Black Elk Hotel approved in 2017, a wall has been created between the town and the District. It hides both the District and the closest of Napa's few hillides visible from the center of town. Both of these hotels have not been built. It is not too late to rectify very bad planning decisions. City Council, tear down this wall!

Update 1/30/24

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NVR 1/30/24: Napa city Planning Commission to review new permits for Oxbow district hotel
At the Napa City Planning Commission on 2/1/24. The agenda is here.

These developers have a lousy track record on their previous developments: Cambria hotels in Napa, Sonoma counties lost in $80 million foreclosure Why should anyone respect or approve their numbers this time?

NVR 3/6/23: New developer of Napa Oxbow hotel asks for more rooms

Update 3/8/22

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Friends of the Napa River LTE 3/8/22: Protect Oxbow District's 'unique character'

The previous branding effort of the Oxbow District in 2018 (see below) already had one aproved blot on its unique character: the 5-story tenament-house-like Black Oak hotel. There are now two approved hotels, which, as can be seen from the rendering immediately below (that tries to fade-out the impact of the Black Oak) completely block any view of the district and the hills beyond from downtown and any sense of a downtown from the Oxbow District. Unless the proposal by the Friends of the Napa River includes a revocation of these two permits, and an effort to defeat the monumental 5-story Wine Train Hotel, there is no hope of achieving the goals of "building small and retaining the Oxbow District's unique character." The damage to the character of the district is already entitled.

Update 11/20/20 Foxbow Hotel

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NVR 11/20/20: Napa council narrowly approves 4-story hotel for Oxbow District

The rendering shows as clearly as possible the results noted in the discussion of the Black Elk Hotel below: that the development being approved by the city for the Oxbow tourism district is in fact creating an inhospitable barrier between the district and downtown. The walk between the two, perhaps the most heavily touristed route in the city, is already a dispiriting gauntlet of traffic and narrow sidewalks. Now the walker will be confronted by a wall of buildings before reaching the destination.

The lack of overall city planning and the relegation of the future development of the city to the avarice of building developers wishing to maximise their envelopes is just one more example of the failure the governments of Napa County to maintain the rural, small town, agricultural character that made this an enjoyable place to live and a memorable place to visit.

NVR 7/17/20: Napa's Planning Commission declines to recommend Oxbow hotel project
NVR 7/11/20: City to evaluate Napa hotel straddling Wine Train line; two historic homes to be moved

NVR 3/2/18: Napa planners ask is Foxbow too much hotel for the neighborhood
NVR 2/28/18: Napa city planners to take up Foxbow hotel plan in Oxbow District

Oh No! Another over-scaled, over-wrought hotel crammed onto First Street.
This one is more apartment-looking than the previous version, an advantage if the tourism market crashes at the end of this hotel bubble.

Preliminary review at the Napa City Planning Commission Thursday, Mar 1st, 2018 at 5:30pm. Staff report is here.

1/16/19 Oxbow Branding Study

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NVR 1/16/19: Study supports branding Napa's Oxbow district, showcasing river

2018 ULI Oxbow Branding study

A well done study, but one that has as its purpose the development and marketing of yet another tourist attraction to further urbanize the Napa Valley, adding to the many impacts that are degrading what was until recently a prized rural, small-town quality of life.

It has come at least one building approval too late. From the article: "city leaders can ...consider zoning that would prevent new construction from blocking views of the river and Napa Valley edges". It was obvious that the Black Elk hotel was a bad idea from an urban planning standpoint when it was proposed (see update 7/14/17 here) and yet it was approved anyway. Coming a year after the Black Elk approval, It could be that this study was a result of that unfortunate event. (Or perhaps it was in reaction to the massive Wine Train Hotel proposed next door. Or the Foxbow Hotel just kitty corner. Or maybe it was simply a reaction to the already built, noisy and tacky "The Studio", the true definition of a tourist trap venue.)

Why do government leaders always take action after the fact - waiting for problems to become insoluble before trying to solve them?



Update 1/6/18 Wine Train Hotel

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NVR 1/6/18: Napa planners comment on Wine Train's future hotel, rail depot on McKinstry Street
The Staff report on the project is here. (large file)
NVR 12/23/17: Top 10 of 2017, No. 7: Hotels, tourism continue Napa boom
7/14/17 Black Elk Hotel

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NVR 8/18/17: Napa planners approve 5-story Black Elk hotel in Oxbow district
NVR 7/4/17: Proposed four-story Oxbow hotel to receive Napa planners' scrutiny

The Black Elk Hotel had a preliminary review by the Napa City Planning Commission on July 6th 2017. The Staff Report and Documents are here. It is a very innappropriate building for the location, out of scale, a visual barrier to the Oxbow district, of "barnish" shape and materials out of place in its urban setting, a box of a building trying to squeeze as many hotel rooms as possible on the small site, which brought to mind a 19th century tenement house.

What became very apparent here, and in all of the hotel projects in the news recently, is that the city has no master plan for the development of the city, no commitment to integrate housing and real people and businesses into the tourism economy, and no design guidelines to regulate what the character of the place will become. As with the rural areas of the county, the future of Napa City is being irrevocably altered in this developer boom period, and the Planning Commission decisions about Napa's future are being made on an ad hoc basis, one isolated project at a time, without looking at the long term result. Which, of course, will be a hodgepodge of developers' schemes, some with good taste and some without, trying to maximize the money to be made from the tourist trade on every square inch of the city, while the residents are forced out.

Update 5/4/24

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On 5/21/24 the Supes will be "considering" the proposed Development Agreement for the the project, a 79 unit hotel, staff housing and 5 residential units, taking public comment and giving direction to staff prior to the project being reviewed at the Planning Commisssion at a later date.
Hearing Notice
Project Documents

Update 12/5/23

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NVR 12/6/23: Napa County supervisors see housing an issue for The Inn at the Abbey

Supes voted to have staff come back at beginning of year for another scoping session based on their comments. As with the Oak Knoll Hotel, Supes, led by Sup. Pedroza, saw the need to produce actual affordable housing (more commensurate with the number of added employees) as part of the project rather than just affordable housing fees. This is a hopeful trend in obtaining approvals, one that should also apply to wineryies. Tying the actual impacts of job creation to the projects that create those jobs would bring a much more deliberative process in the potential urbanization of the county.

Staff Agenda Letter
Video of 12/5/23 Board Meeting

Update 11/28/23

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NVR 11/28/23: Proposed Napa Valley hotel near Freemark Abbey back in public arena

In their own scoping session, Supervisors will assess the project in consideration of a possible development agreement. If the project is realized it will be one more precedent on the road to a true Las Vegas of Wine where entertainment revenues totally eclipse the need to produce or sell wine.

Update 8/6/20

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NVR 8/6/20: Napa County takes initial look at proposed Highway 29 hotel
8/5/20 PC meeting video
8/5/20 PC agenda and docs
Project Documents

7/31/20

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A "scoping session" will be held by the Napa County Planning Commission on Aug 5, 2020 for The Inn at the Abbey, a resort project being developed as an extension of the Freemark Abbey north of St. Helena. The meeting agenda with project documents is here. The project will be presented, and the public and planning commissioners will have a chance to weigh in on the project prior to the Planning Department's preparation of an Environmental Impact Report.

Notice of Preparation of the Environmental Imapct Report

This is one of several projects under government review in which the wine industry is making its way into the hotel business. The Farmstead Hotel and the Hall Winery Hotel are also under review. In addition there are at least a couple of projects in which a winery is integral to the resort being developed: Marriott AC Hotel being developed with a winery next door. And the under development Calistoga Hills Resort bought the Reverie Winery and vineyards next door. And then, of course, there is the mammoth Guenoc Valley development proposed just over the county line.

The combination of wine making and hotel accommodation is a new paradigm in Napa County but also, in fact, just represents a continuum in the conversion wine production facilities into tourism venues, first with paid wine tasting and then with food service. Wineries are now only being built based on the tourism related "experiences" and income they produce. The incorporation of lodging into that "experience" is the next step. It is an ominous direction for those that feel that Napa County has already become overburdened by tourism impacts: traffic, housing shortages, loss of local businesses and small-town life.

There are well over 500 official wineries in Napa County. As more winery-hotel projects are realized, the wineries currently prohibited from increasing their revenue stream with overnight guests will agitate for the further loosening of the WDO, as they did for food service, to allow them to compete. Converting wineries into hotels puts Napa County on the road to become a wine-themed Las Vegas. It's easy to imagine what the Palazzo di Amorosa or The Prisoner Cells will be like. Considering how hard Napa has resisted the incursion of casinos into the county, it is odd that they seem to be so willing to consider this transformation.

George Caloyannidis, in a written comment for the scoping session, has asked county planners to consider the cumulative impacts of similar projects, existant and proposed, near the project as required by the State for the production of an Environmental Impact Report. It is an analysis often glossed over with token mitigations in the planning review resulting in a conclusion in the EIR of less-than-significant impacts. Yet the impacts of project after project being built in the county, bringing ever more visitors, employees, traffic, strain on services and resources, loss of rural character and small-town life, have begun to impact everyone that lives here - very significantly.
Caloyannidis Comment about cumulative impacts of resort projects

Update 6/10/22

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NVR 6/10/22: Napa's Stanly Ranch resort welcomes guests

Homes: $6-12mil
Rooms: min $1250/night
Spa day-pass for locals: $350

Update 3/14/21

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Gary Margadant sends this link to Stanly Ranch's hiring page. As noted in the EIR for the project, Stanly Ranch anticipates hiring some 500 people to staff the resort. In most economies, creating jobs and expanding the population to fill them is a sign of capitalism at work increasing prosperity. But such a prosperity scenario has always had a corollary: increased urbanization. In a county that has nominally resisted urbanization to protect its agriculture-based principal product, such job growth dogma, and the cascade of urban development that follows in its wake, will continue to erode the longevity of that product.

Update 10/29/21

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NVR 10/29/21: $4 million Stanly Ranch homes debut in south Napa: Auberge Resorts launch sales

No doubt this is just one of many high-end gated communities that will fill in the vineyards as the valley suburbanizes in the coming decades.

It is the second resort to bury totally rural vineyards with suburban development: Taking a trip to Calistoga last year I was blown away to see a housing tract on the east side of the Silverado Trail - the Four Seasons Resort. The shock of confronting such a project on the pristine "rural" side of the Trail made it all too clear that the battle for the rural soul of Napa has been lost to developers' frantic lust to turn this place into Walnut Creek.


For decades the wine industry fought like hell to limit the housing tracts that threatened the survival of their vines and their rural lifestyles. Now, with the industry wedded to the entertainment industry, call it a resort and there's no problem.

Update 11/5/20

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NVR 11/5/20: Amid rolling vineyards, a new luxury resort is rising in south Napa

There is a difference between agriculture and tourism.


Napa Valley then and now

Update 2/26/20

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NVR 2/26/20: Second phase of Stanly Ranch Resort approved by Napa's Planning Commission
NVR 10/3/19: Napa city to review designs for Stanly Ranch resort residences
NVR 9/23/19: Napa's Stanly Ranch resort starts construction

Update 8/16/18

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NVR 5/9/15: New $45 million investment for a planned Stanly Ranch resort in south Napa

Stanly Ranch returns from funding limbo. The project would add another 500 low wage employees looking for affordable housing. It would also contribute $4.4 million to the city's affordable housing fund. The cost of 50 units of affordable housing in Napa was just pegged at $24 million. By that standard the $4.4 million will be enough for 9 affordable housing units, enough to house perhaps 18 of the 500 employees. The continuing imbalance of jobs and housing in Napa County, increased with each new development project, is not sustainable.

This is also another example of the trend toward the winery hotel that will eventually be demanded in the unincorporated areas just as restaurant wineries are now.

Original Post 5/7/17

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Update 5/7/17: Only recently, after stumbling upon these documents, have I become attuned to the third mega-project that will be urbanizing the agricultural entry to the county just south of the Hwy 29 and 121 junction in Carneros. It is a housing project and resort known as Stanly Ranch. The resort project was approved by the City of Napa in 2010. Sometimes, until you see a site plan, the numbers representing the project in a table don't have an impact. A big chunk of vineyards at the approach to the Valley is to become suburbanized and another bit of Napa's forlorn effort to maintain a greenbelt separating the city from the sprawl moving up from American Canyon will disappear.

The property was annexed to the City of Napa in 1964 for future use, in an age when suburban expansion was the anticipated fate of all Bay Area counties. As a far-removed extension of the subsequently-created urban-rural lines in the county, it can now be seen as a historical artifact, like the property proposed for the Oak Knoll Hotel, that violates the separation between existing urban and rural uses that the county and cities have been committed to since the ag preserve and Measure J were enacted. It could be rezoned back to agricultural use if there was a will, but it is another example that zoning changes only go in one direction - toward urban development.
Articles
NVR 2/17/21: Napa gives go-ahead for Stanly Ranch luxury hotel
NVR 12/20/15: City gives thumbs-up for luxury hotel at Stanly Ranch
NVR 11/2/15: Stanly Ranch receives recycled water go-ahead
NVR 5/9/15: Stanly Ranch resort developer promises 'authenticity'
NVR 11/19/13: Pipeline project to bring water to Carneros area
NVR 11/6/10: Settlement says St. Regis developer must support affordable housing
NVR 1/23/10: Critics blast St. Regis project, but city touts revenues; more hearings ahead
NVR 4/17/05: Merryvale set to begin Stanly Ranch renovation this summer

Documents
2009 City of Napa Stanly Ranch EIR project description

Update 4/20/22

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SH Star 12/21/21: St. Helena City Council settles Hall lawsuit over water service

I somehow missed the latest development in the Hall Winery Hotel story.

Presumably the residents of St. Helena, in one way or another, will now be paying the the Halls $950,000 to help them expand their empire. Starting with a glitzy plan for their mega-winery, then the years-long battle over the Walt Ranch vineyard estates, kicking folks out of their mobile homes and now this extraction from St. Helenan pocketbooks, the Halls just can't seem to stop alienating Napa residents with their conspicious, never-quenched ambitions.

The settlement in St. Helena also looms over the Board of Supervisors as the last approval needed for the tree clearing on the Hall's Walt Ranch project to begin is being deliberated. Their decision is unlikely to be based just on the effectiveness of the GHG miitgation plan.

Update 6/28/18

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NVR 1/29/19: Hall sues city of St. Helena, demands water for mobile home park site

Update 6/28/18

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NVR 6/28/18: St. Helena City Council spells out 'significant concerns' about Hall mobile home park plan
NVR 6/20/18: St. Helena City Council criticizes Hall plan to revamp former mobile home park

SH City Council is on the case!

6/5/18

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The Halls have just submitted a request for a development agreement and a "minor" modification of the use permit for the mobile home park that they now own next to their Bunny Foo Foo winery. The property was granted a use permit as a mobile home park in 1961 with 18 spaces and 4 structures and is now largely a vacant piece of property. The minor modification would allow demolition of the existing structures on the property and the addition of 22 "manufactured homes" and a clubhouse building with pool and event areas. 14 of the two story manufactured homes would provide 28 hotel suites. 7 of the manufactured homes would be 3 story town house units, no doubt for short term rental. There is a direct connection to the garden of the adjacent Hall Winery.

Project notice
The county documents are here

The project is called the Vineland Vista Mobile Home Park. This is not a mobile home park. It is a change in use from a grandfathered housing project (affordable housing at that!) in the Ag Preserve to a commercial resort hotel with the obvious increase in staffing, water and daily usage adding to Napa's infrastructure, housing and traffic woes. To treat it as a minor modification of the 1961 use permit, and to claim that it " does not change the overall intensity of use of the Property", is ludicrous. Unfortunately, it is one more indication that the "wine" industry is moving beyond food service and events and into the lodging sector as well (more on hotels in the vineyards here).

While being presented as a planned development of manufactured homes, this is an obvious change from residential use not consistent with the definition of manufactured homes. These are not "designed to be used as a single-family dwelling[s]" as defined by the law. Far beyond a minor modification, the project raises the question of a change in zoning use subject to Measure J/P. And as a new use paradigm, it should be required to have a full EIR.

Once again the Halls are trying to hide major development projects within the parameters of minor change. Walt Ranch is a housing estate development masquerading as agriculture. This is a trend-setting winery hotel project masquerading as a spruced-up mobile home park.

Update 2/21/21

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NVR 2/21/22: 'Hotel California' approved by Napa planners

Update 10/14/21

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NVR 10/14/21: Cambria Hotel Napa Valley now open

Many more on the way.

Update 7/12/20 Franklin Station Hotel

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Update 9/17/20

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SH Star 9/17/20: St. Helena holds first public hearing on Farmstead hotel project

7/14/20

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The wine industry is now venturing into overnight accommodation after their success in becoming restauranteurs. A prime example is the movement of Ted Hall's Long Meadow Ranch, starting from grape growing to wine making to the Farmstead Restaurant and now to the proposed Farmstead Hotel. Mr. Hall is so far the exemplar developer in the Valley. Each effort to move into tourism has been conceived in an understated, locationally appropriate and environmentally sensitive way. No Tuscan Castles, French Palaces or Bunny Foo-Foo's to litter the landscape.

But no matter how well done, the Farmstead Hotel represents an acceleration of the massive tourism expansion that has already distorted normal life in Napa. Wine makers are getting into the hotel business.

Ted Hall's project is a sensitive attempt to accommodate community concern while still tapping into the conversion of his home from a wine making region into a tourist destination. The project site, when viewed in the aerial photo, a field notched into the urban fabric of the town, is not destined to remain a field for long. The visual, traffic and water impacts on the town would be barely different and perhaps less than the townhouses that would probably be built instead.

But it is right to push back on the unceasing expansion of the tourism industry that is destroying the rural small-town authenticity that used to be the county's claim to fame. This project deserves scrutiny, especially since it is an early example of an ominous new trend in the wine industry toward hotel development. The winery hotel being proposed by the other Halls and the Freemark Abbey Hotel are also in the vanguard. The continued development of such projects at the more than 500 wineries in the county, developed by less community-conscious entrepreneurs than Mr. Hall, will have far reaching consequences for the character of Napa County.

Documents
7/14/20 City Council meeting agenda and documents
7/12/20 George Caloyannidis Letter
Staff Agenda Report and Graphics

Articles
NVR 7/12/20: St. Helena seeks input on Farmstead hotel proposal
SH Star 4/29/20: St. Helena to negotiate with applicant on potential Farmstead hotel
SH Star 2/19/19: Farmstead owner plans new hotel in St. Helena
NVR 8/1715: St. Helena council praises Farmstead hotel plan

Update 7/12/20

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NVR 7/11/20: City planners to review post office-to-hotel conversion in downtown Napa

NVR 9/14/19: Updated design for Napa's Franklin Station hotel

Nicer renderings, and the more solid box on the corner is a better fit with the Post Office. building.

11/14/18

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NVR 11/14/18: Napa council grants historic, earthquake-damaged post office new life as a hotel
NVR 10/25/18: City: Hotel plan preserves historic quality of downtown Napa's post office
NVR 10/19/18: Hotel at earthquake-rocked Napa post office wins city planners' backing

Kudos to the developer for taking a financial gamble on this significant restoration project. But still, another 163 rooms added to the thousands in process

NVR 6/7/19: Napa County Landmarks questions design of post office-to-hotel conversion

Napa County Landmarks letter

NVR 6/4/19: Napa planners to get their first look at the Franklin Station hotel project

It's a shame that this hotel building boom is happening during the current revival of the boxy modernism from the 1950's through the 70's that severely dehumanized the Beaux Arts character of most American Cities up to that time. While it is commendable that the developers have made the costly effort to incorporate the historical structures on their sites, the two prewar remnants embedded in the Franklin Station and Archer Hotels will be only forlorn reminders of Napa's lost, small-town environment.

Update 3/4/20

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3/4/20 Planning Commission video
3/4/20 Planning Commission agenda and documents

In perhaps one of the more interesting discussions from a policy standpoint in the last so many years, the County Planning Commission seems to be saying that approval of the Oak Knoll Hotel EIR might require the applicant make a real solution to the housing need created by the new jobs at the project. Either through a COA that so many units of a market-rate housing project elsewhere will be made affordable by the applicant or that the applicant will be directly involved in the creation of affordable rate units elsewhere. This new emphasis on providing housing follows the concern of nearby Yountville mayor John Dunbar expressed in this letter. And following the example of Gasser allocating affordable housing specifically to support its hotel project.

The applicant has proposed an increased one-time contribution to an existing housing project to subsidize the costs of providing affordable housing at the time of the building permit is issued. (Say toward to Napa Pipe's affordable housing units.) One developer contributing to another developer? hmm. Planning Commissioner. Mazotti, a developer himself, has the most significant comments in all this and he does have concerns about tying this payment and the permit to vagaries of the execution of another project.

$1 mil seems to be the amount the applicant has offered as a one time contribution.

Planning Director Morrison acknowledges that building affordable housing is really expensive and tying the contribution to the building of new units might be ineffective. The county does have a worker proximity housing fund which might be a better place for the contribution. That fund is for home buying rather than renting and hence would probably preclude most new workers in the county.

Dir. Morrison said the 150 units at Napa Pipe cost $30mil, or $200,000 per unit (which seems really low to me compared to this in-constructtion recent example). $1mil would provide 5 units for the 33 employees of the hotel, i.e. at most 30% of the new housing need created assuming 2 employees per house. Napa Pipe has also taken 12 years of convoluted effort to begin. On the other hand, $1mil divided as monthly rent subsidies of say $1000 per month per unit would amount to 5 years of subsidies for the 33 workers assuming 2 workers/unit.

This whole discussion and the COA that the Commission wants to add, represents a major policy issue that should be made through the BOS on a county wide basis applying to all new projects, including wineries, industrial buildings, as well as resorts and hotels, that add to the affordable housing need in the county. The easiest COA might be to add a condition that for each employee of the project, a yearly payment, or a one time payment covering say 10 years, is made by the owner of the property that amounts to the difference between affordable and average market rate housing in the county. Employees could then draw from that fund (presumably a more inclusive worker proximity fund) to supplement their housing pay. How that fund is administered and regulated, since it would be substantial and need a lot of bookkeeping, might require a greater effort than the county currently makes on the worker proximity fund. As a major effort to combat the housing crisis and make developers and owners factor in the impacts they create, some similar policy would be a landmark piece of legislation. It is a decision that needs to be made by the Board and not the Commission.

The FEIR was certified 3-0 with Gallagher no and Hansen gone, with the added COA that $1mil would be handed over upon issuance of a building certificate, to another housing developer or to the county's proximity workforce housing fund.

Update 2/28/20

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NVR 2/28/20: One rural Napa County hotel wrapping up, another on the horizon

The Oak Knoll Final EIR will be certified by the County Planning Commission on Mar 4, 2020. The meeting agenda and documents are here. It is the only item on the agenda.

And now a new winery hotel is being proposed, The Inn at the Abbey, following on the Farmstead Hotel at Longmeadow Ranch and the Hall Winery Hotel. It is only a matter of time, perhaps when the next recession occurs, before a push will come from the industry for a change in the WDO to allow overnight accommodation in addition to food service. As we've seen, it is difficult to limit the profits to be made from tourism entertainment solely to the major wineries. The vanity vintners want in on the act.

The trend seems fairly predictable. The consideration of food service as an agricultural process has been promoted by the industry and legalized in successive ordinances since 2008.

Update 1/23/20 Oak KnollFEIR

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NVR 1/23/20: Proposed hotel on Solano Avenue wins Napa County Planning Commission praise

And there you have it: "Planning Commission Chair Dave Whitmer said the commission wouldn’t consider a hotel in this area if the property wasn’t zoned commercial. But it is." Zoning changes are a one-way street: urbanizing density can only be increased, not decreased. The future urban development of the county is assured.

Update 1/2/20 FEIR

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The Final Environmental Impact Report of the the Oak Knoll Hotel project is done and will be presented at the Planning Commission on Jan 22, 2020.
Hearing Notice
County's Oak Knoll Hotel page
Oak Knoll FEIR, comments, responses
NVR 1/2/20: Napa County answers questions about proposed Solano Avenue hotel

I had forgotten that I had submitted a letter on the project. (It was the 6/30/17 entry below). Ascent's response to one point in the letter restates a circular argument made often by EIR consultant's to less environmentally impactful alternatives:
Less impactful alternatives are infeasible because they are not what the developer wants to do. As is the case with most of the winery projects being approved in the county, this project's actual objective, given its suitability as prime vineyard land, is simply to make more money from the land than can be made with agriculture. To dismiss the feasibility of raising crops because a developer wants to make more money than agriculture can provide is a slippery slope in a place with the purported objective of preserving ag land. The slide has well begun.

Update 7/5/18

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NVR 7/16/18: Napa Planning Commission gets a first look at rural Oak Knoll hotel project
NVR 7/5/18: Proposed Solano Avenue resort under environmental scrutiny by Napa County

Update 6/22/18 DEIR

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A Draft EIR for the Oak Knoll Hotel project is now available.
The Notice of Availability is here
The DEIR is Here

Original Post 6/30/17

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NVR 6/29/17: County studies proposed Oak Knoll hotel on rare rural commercial property
Yountville Sun 6/29/17: Neighbors Not Sold on Oak Knoll Hotel Project

County Oak Knoll Hotel page
EIR Notice of Preparation

Given the relentless explosion of hotel projects in Napa, it is only a matter of time before overnight accommodation is included in Napa County's definition for agriculture - just as food service and party events are now - to allow for their construction in the vineyards. The Oak Knoll Hotel, filling up a parcel on a legacy commercially zoned parcel surrounded by Agricultural Resource zoned land, is a forerunner of a trend that will become increasingly common in the current development frenzy to convert agricultural land to more profitable use. We already have the examples of the Carneros Inn and the Poetry Inn and the approved resort at Stanly Ranch. And the always threatened Altamura hotel at Trancas and the Trail. A highly respected grower-vintner is also proposing a hotel adjacent to one of his wineries and recently another winery hotel is being proposed by the Halls. Again, as with Oak Knoll, the zoning may allow such projects, but the incorporation of overnight stays into the heart of the agricultural landscape, even more impactful than the event-center wineries currently being approved throughout the vineyards, sets a precident that will up the pressure to change the definition of agriculture to allow inclusion of such use on a routine basis.

The county policy in the General Plan that applies to this legacy property use, Policy AG/LU-45 states that :

"With respect to Policies AG/LU-44 and 45, due to the small numbers of such parcels, their limited capacity for commercially viable agriculture due to pre-existing uses and/or size, location and lot configuration, and the minimal impact such commercial operations and expansions will have on adjacent agriculture or open space activities or the agricultural and open space character of the surrounding area, such limited development will not be detrimental to Agriculture, Watershed or Open Space policies of the General Plan."

This parcel is eminently viable for agricultural use, leased perhaps to the owner of the adjacent vineyards. This project will not have a "minimal impact". The impact of a 50 room hotel, 33 employees and 109-space parking lot, on the open-space character of the surrounding vineyards plus the increased traffic and water and sewer concerns such a project presents, should be a point of contention between the county and the developer. Perhaps the various alternatives presented by staff to the planning commission represent some pushback from the county. But it is not enough.

An alternative not presented in the DEIR (which might be considered "2c-No Project-Existing Entitlements Alternative (Agricultural Restoration)") is the use of the property for agriculture. Money can actually be made growing grapes in Napa County. It is not a taking to disallow building construction on prime arable land at the center of the Napa Valley.

Paradise is being paved over in one building project after another as the official guardians of the county's rural heritage continue to promote development interests, hoping to bolster government coffers while really just adding to the government expense of maintaining a more urban environment.

This project is an opportunity to mitigate that development trajectory and suggest that the urbanization that is currently nibbling away at Napa's agricultural land, with building projects approved at almost every planning commission meeting, can not only be slowed but in fact reversed.

NVR 6/2/18: Napa's Gasser Foundation proposing 200 apartments and a hotel for Soscol Avenue

The 30 affordable units in the housing project won't quite accommodate the 100-150 new hotel employees, but Gasser is setting a trend by tying actual affordable housing construction, not just token mitigation fees, to tourism development.

That being said, the increase in population and continuing urbanization of the county and shift in the economy from wine to entertainment spells a long term decline for agriculture and the rural character that everyone claims to treasure.

Update 6/1/18

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NVR 7/16/18: Future of Napa Marriott hotel lies with City Council
NVR 6/1/18: Napa [City] planners advance hotel-winery plan, despite housing concerns

Comm. Murray said, regarding the number of new workers needing affordable housing: "We can't be continually punting the ball down the field, but we can't put the burden all on one project," to which the logical reply is "Why not?" This particular project is increasing the affordable housing shortage by a specific number of units. Why shouldn't the project create those units as a condition of approval or else pay for the difference between affordable and market rate housing for every employee?

More about the traffic impact of this project and other projects around bottleneck junction is here.
5/24/18

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The Trinitas Mixed Use (Marriott Hotel-Winery-Office Bldg) complex is up before the Airport Land Use Commission (County Planning Commission + 2) on June 6, 2018. It is a 253 room hotel, 25,000 sf winery (no capacity or visitation specified but 57 parking spaces allowed), 30,000 sf office bldg, and 441 total parking spaces.
The notice is here
The project documents are here (large file)

Is it compatible next to the airport? No less than the Meritage or the County office buildings, one would assume. Will the current traffic jam at the entrance to the airport, made that much worse by one more huge project up the road, be discussed? Probably not.

NVR 6/2/17: Design of south Napa Marriott hotel leaves city planners cold
NVR 6/1/17: Napa planners to get first a look at a Marriott hotel, winery
NVR 5/18/18: Napa planners grapple with housing demands of 250-room Marriott hotel

7/14/17

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NVR 8/18/17: Napa planners approve 5-story Black Elk hotel in Oxbow district
NVR 7/4/17: Proposed four-story Oxbow hotel to receive Napa planners' scrutiny

The Black Elk Hotel had a preliminary review by the Napa City Planning Commission on July 6th 2017. The Staff Report and Documents are here. It is a very innappropriate building for the location, out of scale, a visual barrier to the Oxbow district, of "barnish" shape and materials out of place in its urban setting, a box of a building trying to squeeze as many hotel rooms as possible on the small site, which brought to mind a 19th century tenement house.

What became very apparent here, and in all of the hotel projects in the news recently, is that the city has no master plan for the development of the city, no commitment to integrate housing and real people and businesses into the tourism economy, and no design guidelines to regulate what the character of the place will become. As with the rural areas of the county, the future of Napa City is being irrevocably altered in this developer boom period, and the Planning Commission decisions about Napa's future are being made on an ad hoc basis, one isolated project at a time, without looking at the long term result. Which, of course, will be a hodgepodge of developers' schemes, some with good taste and some without, trying to maximize the money to be made from the tourist trade on every square inch of the city, while the residents are forced out.