Bill Hocker | Oct 1, 2015

A new event center winery is coming up before the planning commission on Oct. 7th: 80,000 gal/yr, 66,000sf (inc 33,000 sf of caves) 27,000 visitors/yr. on a 166 acre property in Carneros. Item 9A on the agenda here.

What's interesting here is the first use of Dir. Morrison's more comprehensive charts designed to help the planning commission in determining the appropriateness of the requests before them. The charts for the project are here.

Several things are now quite apparent: 1. this project is a bit smallish compared to its public winery neighbors but largish compared to its by-appt. neighbor. 2. It is over the top in building size (4x) , and visitation (2-2.5x) compared to other similar capacity wineries throughout the county. (the median calc on the by-appt wineries looks like it's off)

This is also the first opportunity to try out the two criteria categories and see if they help to arrive at an appropriate project.

The project is quite frankly a clean and low key "napaesque" design, tucked away in the hills on a very large site. Is water a problem - probably not given the reservoir. I could be wrong but is seems that there may be no neighbors that will complain. Its impacts will be only those of the additional traffic its visitors and employees will generate at the already clogged interchanges along 29 south of Napa and the additional people it encourages to come to Napa Valley requiring hotels and restaurants. Those cumulative impacts are, of course, what everyone is complaining about. The county's Hudson page is here

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