Napa’s booming new construction signals a renaissance on the horizon.
With 600,000 square feet of new construction under way, the city of Napa (population 73,000) is booming. Projects include three hotels (one of which is the Ritz-Carlton) as well as offices, residences, retail spaces and restaurants. Alongside the new, historic gems such as the Goodman Library (built in 1901), the Opera House (1879) and the Hatt Mill Building (1884) have been restored and polished. Revenues from these projects, in terms of increased sales, property and hotel taxes, will help the city restore and, in some cases, expand services reduced in recent years by a shaky budget.
Is this a Napa renaissance? Will it be worth the inconvenience of several years of noise, dust, construction equipment and closed streets? Why is all of this activity happening at the same time?
We asked several local experts about these projects and their vision for the city of Napa.
What’s happening?
After years of slow to no development downtown, nine major public and private projects began this spring.
“When I got here 11 years ago, a lot of these projects were on the horizon,” says Craig Smith, executive director of the Napa Downtown Association. “It all came to a crashing halt with 9/11 and the fall of the stock market, among other things. There was a redevelopment study in 1997 that said we, as a valley, needed twice as many hotel rooms as we currently had, but nothing new was built. Now it’s all happening. It’s exciting and overwhelming to go from zero to 60, or in this case zero to 120, overnight. It’s just crazy.”
Just what is going on? In the downtown area alone, Main Street West, a mixed-use building, is being erected on Main and Clinton streets. On First Street, the Zeller Building will be a combination of office and retail space; half a block west is Napa Square, which will have underground parking, 57,000 square feet of office space and 8,000 square feet of retail. Across the street, the Inn at Town Center, a five-story hotel with 142 rooms and retail space, has begun construction. To the east, the Oxbow Public Market, the Westin Verasa condominium hotel and the Riverfront, a mixed office, retail and residence project, are under way. Nearby, construction has started on a new 450-space parking garage. A 350-room Ritz-Carlton is also in the planning stages.
It’s become so complicated that the City of Napa has an online interactive Downtown Projects Map (www.cityofnapanews.com), which is regularly updated.
“The biggest change people are going to see is the offerings, the pure quantity of items that will be available,” says Smith. “We had a restricted offering of restaurants 12 years ago, and now we have a wide palette of things from which to choose. It’s going to be the same way with retail opportunities and things to do. The river is just going to open up with walkways, activities and dining.”
Smith sees national chains, which had previously given Napa a wide berth, being attracted to this new downtown. “One of the things that’s restrictive to retailers now is there’s limited space available and it’s already prefigured—it’s a certain size,” explains Smith. “The new space that’s opening up will give people more flexibility to get exactly what they want rather than just what’s available. That’s going to let more people come in.”
But will the national chains drive out local businesses?
“I think it will always be a local downtown, with primarily locals shopping here, but you’ll see a balance of national chains and local businesses. That’ll make a better shopping experience.”
High anxiety
“The short-term concerns of our members include all the construction and its impact,” says Smith. “It’s funny, because people think it must be dead down here. When a children’s furnishing and clothing store closed and said it was because of the construction, a clothing store directly across the street from it had its best May ever.”
Are people worried that the downtown area will lose its small town ambiance?
“Some folks were concerned about the height of the buildings and with the hotels coming in that we might lose some of our charm,” says Smith. “I point to Healdsburg and tell them to walk around the square there. Healdsburg used to be three sides of a square, but it filled in the fourth side with hotels—and it still has the same intimacy and feel it wanted to maintain. I don’t think we’re in risk of losing that nearly to the extent that some people think.”
Barry Martin is the city’s community outreach coordinator. His duties include handling a downtown construction coordination group and maintaining the interactive map.
“We’re striving every day to stay out of each other’s way and minimize the inconvenience to the existing businesses and residents who are trying to get to work or through town. We’ve had an unfortunate confluence of multiple projects impacting the same area. Contractors have leeway within their contracts as to when they’re going to work and the city has no say in that. We also have a lighting improvement project that just by its nature takes a lot of parking spaces.
“In the big picture, the fact that you have to drive around to park because of the detours is not the end of the world, but for a businessperson, if people can’t park in front of your business or the sidewalk is blocked, that’s significant. We have to be sensitive to it and get the job done while not ignoring businesses’ needs in the process.”
Martin thinks the parking problem is partially one of perception.
“It’s ironic that, when you go to the mall, you park a half mile from a particular store, but you can see the mall. If you go to a downtown area, you want to be in sight of where you’re going. You end up two blocks away and you feel it’s too far. If we’re going to have a vital, urban core in the downtown Napa area, people may have to walk a little farther sometimes, because there’ll be fewer surface lots as time goes by—we’re going to have to infill places where people are parking right now. The value of real estate rises to the point where the new developers are building underground garages and buildings that are four and five stories tall to maximize space and get their profit out of the property.”
Impact of the flood project
The city of Napa grew around the Napa River. In the mid-1800s, ferries and steamers transported goods and passengers between San Francisco and the new town. Lumber mills, warehouses and tanneries were built on the riverbanks. But being next to a river also means potential floods.
In 1998, Napa County voters passed a half-cent sales tax to bring flood protection and watershed management to the Napa River. The plan provides flood protection by restoring the river’s floodplain and more than 600 acres of tidal wetlands. As part of the plan, bridges have been replaced, floodwalls and levees put into place and a bypass channel will be constructed. Depending on federal funding, the completion is scheduled for 2015.
As part of this “living river” design, extensive walking trails that will eventually link the southern end of the city at Kennedy Park north to Trancas Street are being installed. The Oxbow bypass (named for a natural bend in the river) will create a vast, grassy area for floodwaters in winter months and recreation in warmer months.
With the promise of flood protection as well as increased public access by way of trails, developers are eyeing portions of Napa that previously weren’t considered attractive building sites.
“By 2012, work on the Oxbow bypass is scheduled to be finished. That will create the potential for FEMA to remap the flood plain downstream of the Oxbow, which will reduce people’s insurance rates and spur development in some areas,” says Martin.
Near the Oxbow bypass and adjacent to COPIA: The American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts, will be the Oxbow Public Market. The 40,000-square-foot marketplace, including an outdoor river deck, will feature local food vendors, artisan cafés and organic farm stands. Based on the public market concept (which the San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace is a model of), the market has tenants including The Oxbow Cheese Merchant, The Model Bakery, Three Twins Organic Ice Cream, The Fatted Calf Charcuterie, Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, Anette’s Chocolate Factory and The Olive Press.
“The exciting growth of downtown Napa, in particular the Oxbow District, is very encouraging to us,” says Steve Carlin, founder/CEO of Oxbow Public Market. “We hope the Oxbow Public Market will serve as an important anchor and local gathering place for Napa Valley residents and the many wine and food enthusiasts who visit each year.”
Any time of year, you can find it here
After decades of downtown accommodations limited mostly to B&Bs, three new luxury hotels are set to open in the next year or two.
“The original vision for the Inn at Town Center came out of the concept of ‘find a need and fill it,’” says Jeff Doran, a Napa developer who’s working with LodgeWorks L.P. of Wichita, Kansas, on the 95,385-square-foot hotel. It will include 12,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space. “We’ve always worked hard to make downtown Napa a better place. It came to my attention that what we really need downtown, given the escalation of rents and the cost of doing business, was more foot traffic. The hotel was the perfect antidote for that.”
But city fathers didn’t welcome Doran’s initial plans with open arms.
“There’s a height limitation of 40 feet on a building, and this building was going to be in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 feet, so we were breaking new territory,” remembers Doran, who’s also restored the 1884 Napa Steam Laundry building into offices and the 1913 Johnson-Doran Building (he renamed it after himself, but honored the first owner, Johnson as well) into retail and office space. “The second thing was that everybody was focused on the vision for downtown Napa and nobody, including ourselves, wanted to make downtown Napa a second-class destination. We had to prove to them we’d bring in a quality project—and that was a difficult process.”
LodgeWorks hired the award-winning San Francisco architectural firm Heller Manus to complete the exterior design of the building and the design team shaved a few feet off the height and worked with the city to create a “Planned Development” zone to accommodate the height of the hotel. Without the Planned Development, the height would be limited to 40 feet with provisions to amend that upon approval to 50 feet; the change was approved at 51 feet, eight inches and amended upward to 54 feet, with façade treatments taking it to 59 feet. The $60 million project is scheduled to open at the end of 2008.
“Once you get the foot traffic, you’re going to attract more retail. One just synergizes the other. We’ll have an influx of great retail, people with great vision and young people willing to take some risks that maybe they weren’t able to take before.”
The Westin Verasa condominium hotel is another property that’s broken ground recently. The hotel is being developed by Intrawest Placemaking, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and will be managed by Intrawest Hospitality Management under a license arrangement with Starwood Hotels.
“We’re building 160 condominium units that are sold but then rented back to the hotel operator and placed in a rental pool,” says Benno Nager, vice president of development for Intrawest Placemaking. “They operate like a regular hotel room or suite.”
Why did the Westin franchise want to come to Napa?
“As a resort developer, we’ve always looked for interesting, underserved areas that we can develop and be successful,” explains Nager. “Napa is an area underserved at this time. There aren’t enough hotel beds—certainly not quality hotel beds. Going in there now gives us an opportunity to create a new market.”
Nager is confident that the other incoming hotels in the area will simply raise the bar for the hotel industry.
“We have no concerns about the other hotels. Quite the contrary,” says Nager, “we think that’s great. A rising tide lifts all the boats. We feel we need to have more development in the town of Napa to give the place more vibrancy and appeal.”
Where do we go from here?
“We’re all looking for a formula to keep us vital,” says Napa Mayor Jill Techel. “If we don’t do anything new, we run the risk of becoming stale. If we don’t protect the old, we run the risk of turning around and missing what had made us unique and special. People now treasure the older structures and Victorian homes. We understand that retrofitting them and bringing them back to life is a real bonus.”
Techel sees value in maintaining the old while introducing new elements, and feels the river project may become the town’s centerpiece.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to use the river as an amenity,” says Techel. “We’re seeing a lot more activity with the flood control project and the ability for properties around the river to be redeveloped and made safe from floodwaters.”
She visualizes a different energy in the town when the projects are complete. “We see the cranes and construction and the mess, but people can look past that and see what the result will be,” she says.
“Six months from now, when Veteran’s Park is finished and the river trail is open from the Hatt Building to First Street, people will be walking down First Street, across Soscol to see what’s happening with the Oxbow Market. During this time when people are being told for health reasons to get out of their cars and walk, we’re developing a community that’s going to be connected by pathways. It’s going to be very enjoyable for people to walk around and see things.
“As we’re living in the construction zones, it’s easy to get frustrated with detours and street work and flood control work. For the most part, people are very excited that we’re doing something, that we’re not a community sitting around waiting for someone to invest in us.”
As mayor, Techel focuses on the long-term objectives of the city.
“Our goal is to continue to be a diverse community that houses those who provide the labor for a lot of the businesses in the county. The neighborhoods will continue to evolve and be diverse. We want to have housing that fits the needs of the businesses that come in as well as provide more recreational opportunities. The vision is that the businesses will be strong, the tourists will come, enjoy and leave and, financially, we’ll be able to invest the dollars that are coming into the city with better infrastructure and services.”
Short-term pain for long-term gain
Cassandra Walker, director of the City of Napa Redevelopment/Economic Development Department, believes people are willing to put up with the current blast of construction.
“Most property owners are supportive,” she says. “I think people have been exceptionally patient. Communication is the key. We’re coordinating construction and giving people good, timely information. People have accepted the vision and are looking forward and accepting some inconvenience in the short term.”
The residents in and around downtown Napa have a few years of construction disruption ahead of them, but, in the end, they will have a city that appeals to tourists and offers residents increased amenities. It will be a return to the bustling river town of the 1800s, albeit one with a walking trail, luxury hotels, fine cuisine and lots of shopping.
