Bill Hocker | Sep 30, 2022

Update 9/30/22

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NVR 9/30/22: Napa City Council rejects suggested greenbelt designation for Foster Road

Reversing the Planning Commission's recommendation

NVR 9/18/22: Napa City Council to weigh Foster Road zoning as general plan process nears end

Update 9/5/22

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NVR 9/5/22: City of Napa planners recommend Foster Road change, removing Linda Vista extension from draft general plan

Celebratory email from KNGG
Update 5/2/22

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Comments on the 2040 Napa City General Plan DEIR are due by Fri. May 6, 2022.
City's 2040 General Plan page is here

KNGG talking points on the Ghisletta/Horseman's mixed use designation
Update 4/5/22

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The City of Napa Draft General Plan is now undergoing public scrutiny. The SCR blog post on the plan, dubbed Napavision 2040, is here.

A group of residents has formed to preserve the Foster Road ridge, which includes the Ghisletta Ranch and the Horseman's Association grounds. They have been active in trying to get the City to change its designation of the area in the upcoming General Plan Update from undesignated "Sphere of Influence" to "Greenbelt" to act as a rural gateway to the city. City Staff is proposing to designate it as "Mixed Use" meaning housing and commercial. The properties are both currently outside the city boundary but within the current rural-urban line (RUL), an area long designated for future city annexation. It is the last piece of range-land within the RUL. The community organization is "Keep Napa Gateways Green" and their very well done website is here:

KNGG website

As has happened throughout the county and its municipalities, it falls to individual residents and community groups to protect the rural environment that is our reason to live here, and is the county's nominal claim to fame, against the constant development pressure to monetize that fame. This community activism, unfortunately, is now necessary in the face of government addiction to development fees, campaign contributions, and taxes and mitigation fees that never really cover the long term public costs. New approvals are often justified as revenue generators needed to fill public coffers. It is the viscous cycle of urbanization.

For all of my angst over the beautiful Stewart Farm below, it is still outside of the RUL that defines Napa City, and the draft plan makes no attempt to predict its fate in the future. But in looking at the RUL, that portion of the property is the one piece of build-able land that remains to be added to the RUL to fill out the city's unfortunate massive southward expansion into the Stanly Ranch property.

Update 7/26/21

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NVR 7/25/21: Memory Lane: The Ghislettas and their dairy

Update 4/26/21

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Michael Luttrell LTE 4/25/21: Save Napa's gateway
NVR 4/26/21: Member of Ghisletta family denies plans for developing lands in south Napa

Although the family says that it has "never had an agreement" with any developer (very specific language to use), the fact that the family supports the rezoning of the land for housing in the new general plan, and their dubious rationale that more high-end homes will lead to a general reduction of home prices, is a very ominous sign.

3/15/21

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NVR 3/13/21 Foster Road supporters continue push for area’s inclusion in new Napa greenbelts

That hillside along Hwy 29 coming into the Napa Valley, which I now know as the Stewart diary farm, with its picturesque barns, farmhouse, eucalyptus trees and oak-covered knolls has always seemed the essence of rural California now forever disappearing. Even when I first came to Napa in the 1970's in search of bucolic landscapes to photograph, I remember it as a notable landscape composition. It should be preserved in a bell jar as an icon of what California was once-upon-a-time, before such places were buried by developers seeking greater profits from chewing up raw land rather than recycling underused urban land.

As a gateway to the Napa Valley, it is a reminder of a time before vintners began excavating similar hillsides to cage and discipline nature to their own more profitable ends. We love the look of vine covered hillsides, of course, a better example than housing tracts of man's relentless footprint on the land. But to see the vestiges of real life before the advent of the good-life as you drive into this tourist destination is a history lesson well worth preserving for everyone.

The idea of a greenbelt between Napa and the rest of the world has taken a hit over the last few years. In one of many Napa Pipe hearings, a slide flashed up on the screen, almost incidental in its implication for the project, but profound in its implication for the future of Napa.

All of those areas that should have constituted a greenbelt at the edge of Napa rural-urban line are now being filled with buildings. Napa Valley Commons, Airport industrial zone, Stanly Ranch, Carneros Inn, Meritage Resort, Napa Pipe, the Syar expansion, and for that matter the incorporation of American Canyon in 1992, are all filling the boundary that might have separated Napa from the urban sprawl of the rest of the Bay Area. More such projects are coming.

The idea of greenbelts and rural-urban lines, a product of the same enlightened era that created the Agricultural Preserve, seems to have passed. Yet it is heartening that the idea is being revived here and elsewhere. The Greenbelt Alliance is active and full of hope.

But in Napa it is a bit too late. This is not to say that the Foster Road ridge shouldn't be protected. It should. It is a window into what Napa County once was, a reminder to residents and tourists what the land used to look like, and perhaps a tourist attraction itself. But it is a tragedy that before reaching this gateway to the Napa Valley you must first pass through the relentless industrial development to the south, reducing the real entry to the valley to an alley of warehouses. Yes, preserve as much unspoiled landscape as we possibly can. The few still unspoiled wooded hillsides around Napa need to be preserved. We owe that to future generations. But let's admit that the idea of a greenbelt to protect Napa from being engulfed by the greater bay area is a fading memory.

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