North Bay Great Streets: Yountville and Napa

Early in the holiday season, I made a plan to visit much of the North Bay seeking out great streets.  My criteria were to be the great street standards as set forth by the Project for Public Spaces.

Within the constraints of short visits, not all of standards could be assessed, but some certainly could.  In brief downtown observations, I couldn’t judge the year-round management of a street, but could observe the mixture of uses and the vitality of a sidewalk.

With the rainy December, holiday obligations, and other writing goals, such as the on-going “Intro to Urbanism”, my great streets project has gone slower than hoped, but hasn’t been forgotten.  It will proceed and it will proceed to conclusion.

In previous posts, I’ve noted several points that seemed particularly pertinent to great street performance in the North Bay.  These are the questions of whether the primary street in downtown still functions as the regional highway, how the downtown has responded where a bypass has been constructed, whether traffic is sufficiently calm that pedestrians can jaywalk with care, and whether the local residents live and gather along the street.

 In the post on Petaluma and Cotati, I found that the Boulevard in Petaluma had recovered well from a bypass and was an interesting street, but still carried more traffic than desirable, while Old Redwood Highway in Cotati hadn’t bounced back from the bypass, feeling rather moribund.

In the post on Calistoga and St. Helena, I loved the setting of both primary downtown streets, but found that the dual functions as regional highways resulted in too much traffic and a mixture of business that catered more to tourists than to local residents.

Today, I’ll continuing moving southward in the Napa Valley.

Yountville: Yountville offers a mixture of good and bad, but with the bad quickly outweighing the good.

Highway 29 has long bypassed Yountville, departing Washington Street for a new alignment west of town.  It was an opportunity for the broad community to reclaim the street.  But what happened was the market, likely aided and abetted by City Hall, claimed the street for tourism.

Washington Street through the heart of Yountville is a marvelous pedestrian place, if you’re a wine tourist.  With smooth walking surfaces winding near a calm street and providing easy access to wine shops and upscale restaurants, it’s darned near Disneyland for wine tourists.  And there have been times when I’ve enjoyed it in that role.

But if you’re a local resident of more modest means, looking for a light meal after a youth baseball game or for sidewalk conversation with your neighbors, Washington Street offers little to meet your needs.  It’s the same shortfall I noted in St. Helena and Calistoga, with less history but more gloss.

And that’s a shame.

Napa: I once lived in Napa.  It was only for a little more than a year, but my wife and I enjoyed our time and hold fond memories of downtown.

From that history, I had expectations of my great street search.  I anticipated that my decision would be between First Street and Second Street.  Both have a bit more traffic than I’d prefer, but not overwhelming so.

First Street is the center of Napa’s effort to grab a share of the wine tourism market.  It has a reasonably active sidewalk with a good mixture of storefronts, but is targeted more toward tourists than locals.  Plus much of the architecture comes from an unfortunate era of American building design and undermines the street vitality.

Second Street has the greater level of architecture distinction, especially when the repairs to the recent earthquake damage are complete, and meets more needs of local residents, but many of the functions are governmental or service related, so the street life except during the heart of the day is lacking.

Picking between First and Second Streets wasn’t going to easy.

An unexpected treat, a seasonal ice rink on Second Street, moved the needle toward Second Street, but then I found a surprise.  While cruising downtown, I wandered Main Street heading north, from the recently-built upscale Riverfront project, past a few comfortable eateries and older buildings cleaned up to meet consumer needs, and to the periphery of a comfortable middle-class neighborhood within walking distance of downtown.  I fell in love.

Main Street, between Fifth Street and Napa Street, isn’t a perfect great street.  There are dead areas and the residential areas that it serves could use selective infusion of capital.  But it has eye-popping potential.

Of the North Bay towns about which I’ve thus far written, Petaluma Boulevard in Petaluma has the best current value as a great street.  But, with a little careful nurturing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Main Street as one of the best North Bay streets by 2025.  Not wine-tourist special, but local residents

enjoying their town special.  I wish every North Bay town had a Main Street to cultivate.

Petaluma Urban Chat

Before closing, I’ll update those who have been following the Petaluma Urban Chat consideration of possible re-use of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds.

We had a good turnout for the January 13 meeting where we kicked off a conceptual design effort.  Three teams are currently working on designs.

On January 27, there will be a 5:30pm work session at Taps on East Washington Street for the teams to hone their initial thoughts and to begin working toward the group presentation.  Everyone is welcome, although those not on a team will find themselves mostly looking over shoulders as sketch pens fly.

On February 10, the three teams will present their visions.  The entire Urban Chat group will select a plan, or perhaps a combination of plans, to finalize for community presentation.  Everyone with an interest in the future of the Fairgrounds site is welcome.  Once again, the meeting will be at Taps, starting at 5:30pm.

In my next post, I’ll return to the “Intro to Urbanism” effort, considering what make good public spaces.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

North Bay Great Streets: Calistoga and St. Helena

The cessation of the December rains and the conclusion of Christmas festivities finally allowed me to resume my review of great streets in the North Bay.

As I wrote when setting forth the rules for my holiday season quest, I planned to travel throughout the North Bay, identifying in each city the four-block segment of a street that best met the criteria for great streets as defined by the Project for Public Places.

To be honest, it was a bit of a fool’s errand.  One can’t wander a town for an hour on a chill December morning and expect to definitively assess whether a street has “an active entity that manages the space”.

But there were criteria I could assess, such as “active ground floor uses that create valuable experiences along a street for both pedestrians and motorists”.

So I did the best I could within the time and information available.  Hopefully, my selections, even if not definitive, will at least trigger thoughts and actions in others, moving the urbanist conversation ahead.

The first two cities I visited, before the storm pattern fully established itself, were Petaluma and Cotati.  From those visits, I identified two concepts that I expected to be key to my further North Bay observations.

The first was “bypass”.  The North Bay regional road network originally ran through the heart of most communities, with the initial commercial districts growing up around roadways that carried visitors through towns toward other destinations while also serving as the prime arterials for locals.

But in many towns, increasing traffic loads eventually forced new routes, typically freeways, to be constructed, bypassing the original downtowns.  Where there was sufficient local commercial activity, the original downtowns continued to prosper while transitioning from serving the regional traffic passing through town to serving the local residents and day visitors.

Petaluma is an example.  Perhaps the service stations along Petaluma Boulevard have mostly disappeared since the 101 freeway bypass was completed many years ago, but the downtown, with its restaurants, boutiques, and antique shops, continues to provide an attractive and thriving core.

But when the local economic activity was insufficient, the downtowns began a slow drift downward.  Cotati is an example.  I find downtown Cotati a pleasant place, but it lacks vitality and seems not to have recovered from the 101 freeway bypass.

So the question of whether a downtown has been bypassed, and how it has responded to a bypass, seems key to whether the town has a great street.

The second concept was jaywalking.  I don’t encourage jaywalking, but find that the ability to jaywalk cautiously is a good indicator of a balance between automotive and pedestrian uses.  If traffic has sufficient volume or velocity to preclude jaywalking for all but the foolhardy, that detracts from the greatness of a street.

To those two concepts, I’ll add a third, service to the local community, for the discussion today.  A street can be well-configured with a moderate amount of traffic and the potential for safe jaywalking, but if it doesn’t serve the people who live in the community, many of whom may live within a walkable distance of the street, then the street will serve mostly visitors who arrive by car and the nature of the street will reflect both the car-orientation and the retail needs of the visitors.

There are community benefits from having a great street that meets the local retail needs.  Local residents often visit a street on rainy days or during hours when the car-dependent shoppers are absent, so residents expand the hours that the street may be occupied.  Also, local residents are often in a different demographic group that the car-dependent visitors, so broaden the range of retail services.  (Although framed differently, this is the same point that PPS makes when they write of “diverse user groups”.)

I included the issue of serving local residents because it pertains directly to the cities I’ll describe today, Calistoga and St. Helena.

For Calistoga, the nearest approach to a great street is the four blocks of Lincoln Avenue between the junction with Highway 128 and Fair Way.  Calistoga hasn’t yet been bypassed, so Lincoln Avenue also serves as Highway 29.  As a result, the street is wide and carries a sufficient number of vehicles at a sufficiently high speed that jaywalking is effectively precluded.

Despite those detriments, much of the architecture along the Lincoln Avenue is attractive, the setting of the town near the upper end of the Napa Valley town provides hilly vistas in both directions, and the street is regularly used for community functions such as parades.  It’s a street that almost overcomes the deficiencies of highway traffic.

But it fails as a great street because it doesn’t serve the Calistoga residents well.  Many of the businesses along Lincoln Avenue are upper-end cafes, restaurants, wine shops, and kitchen boutiques targeted for the wine tourists.  But going just a block from Lincoln Avenue, especially to the south, gets into medium to low density housing with residents who seem inconsistent with the retail options on Lincoln Avenue.

I like Lincoln Avenue.  During my visit, I enjoyed walking the street and had a fine breakfast.  But it doesn’t serve the people who live in Calistoga, so it isn’t a great street.

St. Helena, a few miles to the south, is much the same story, but at a higher level.  From appearances, the average resident of St. Helena is more prosperous than his equivalent in Calistoga.  But the nearest approach to a great street, Main Street between Pine Street and Mitchell Drive, is more architecturally distinguished than Calistoga and targets an even higher demographic, once again seeming incompatible with many of the local residents.

Plus, Main Street doubles as Highway 29 and is often jammed with cars creeping through town, mostly the cars of visiting wine tourists.

I love the segment of Main Street in St. Helena and have often visited it with my wife.  But that doesn’t mean that I like it as an urban place.

One can write about the great and exciting physical characteristics or nature of a street, but if the street doesn’t meet the needs of the local residents, then it’s not a great street.  And, based on my observations and despite my affection for both places, neither Calistoga nor St. Helena has a truly great street.

My next post will fall on New Year’s Eve.  I’ll look back at my resolutions of past years, judging my successes and failures, and also put forth a resolution for the New Year.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)