Last Thursday’s announcement of a hotel proposal at Charles Krug Winery raises some legitimate questions:
Where will the water come from? How will guests and employees get in and out? What will be the economic benefits for St. Helena?
One response the idea doesn’t deserve — at least not at such an early stage — is a flat “No!”
In the days since the announcement, we’ve been disappointed by some of the knee-jerk anti-hotel sentiment. The attitude among a vocal segment of St. Helenans seems to be A) This is a hotel, B) Hotels are bad, ergo C) This is bad.
That’s not a thoughtful response. Our community is capable of better than that.
There are right and wrong ways to develop hotels, and it’s too soon to tell which category the Noble House/Wine Train/Krug proposal falls into.
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The still-unbuilt Farmstead project is a model for how a hotel plan can boost the economy, respect the surrounding community, promote St. Helena’s values, and mitigate for its own infrastructure demands.
Maybe the Krug project is just as good. Maybe it’s a disaster. Maybe it’s promising but needs some fine-tuning. Who knows? We haven’t even seen a room count.
In the early days of Rodney Friedrich’s decades-long campaign to build a hotel at Vineland Station, he was presenting his plan at a community meeting when one of his easels fell over. The staunchly anti-hotel crowd cheered with schadenfreude.
We hope those days are over. We need to approach this new project with a spirit of open-minded inquiry.
A June report from Urban Land Institute San Francisco urged the city to pursue more lodging to fund quality-of-life community investments like park maintenance, sidewalk improvements and affordable housing. Downtown businesses say they’re struggling to attract the level of foot traffic enjoyed by more hotel-friendly communities like Calistoga, Yountville and downtown Napa.
As our storm drains and roads crumble and our public works to-do list gets longer and more expensive, St. Helena has been trying to change the perception that we are closed for business. The new General Plan and zoning code signal that St. Helena is open to innovative forms of commerce.
The Farmstead hotel proposal, David and Elyse Walker’s tasteful and historically appropriate restoration of the Vasconi’s building, Ann Backen’s NoMa Café and Collective, and Elliot Bell’s new Charlie’s restaurant demonstrate that smart and creative entrepreneurs are again investing significantly in our town.
That’s why we need to give the Krug hotel proposal a fair hearing before we take a position for or against it.
Is this the right project to help St. Helena’s economy? Is it the right size? What about water demand, sewer capacity and traffic? What are the implications of extending the urban limit line to encompass the project site?
We should attend next week’s meetings, ask those questions, and generate an informed opinion based on the answers — not just shout “No!”
Community meetings on hotel plan
5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25
5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26
St. Helena High School gym
The Star editorial board consists of Napa Valley Register editor Dan Evans and community volunteers Norma Ferriz, Shannon Kuleto, Bonnie Long, Peter McCrea, Chuck Meibeyer, Gail Showley and Dave Yewell.
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