The Napa City Planning Commission considered a draft element of the prospective new General Plan last month, and we took the opportunity to remind the Planners of the importance of the Napa River to the Downtown and Oxbow areas. Here’s what we wrote:
Over thirty years ago, a citizens’ group (Renaissance Napa) held community conversations and gatherings about the Downtown and Oxbow areas. The unanimous finding and recommendation to the community was that the focus of these areas was its heart: the Napa River.
That work helped lead to the founding of the Friends of the Napa River, to Robert Mondavi choosing the Oxbow area for what is now Copia, to the ultimate approval and success of the Napa River Flood Control Project, to the Riverfront development, to miles of river trails and public access.
In the early 2000s, the City, a strong consulting team, and the community worked together to craft a series of plans that included the “Soscol Corridor/Downtown Riverfront Development & Design Guidelines”, the “Tannery Bend Development and Design Guidelines” and the “Napa River Parkway Master Plan”. We know that these need to be pulled off the shelf in the Planning Department, dusted off, and brought forward as additional development is proposed along our River.
Unfortunately, a key area of the River has not been fully addressed and its importance to Friends can be seen in our logo: the Oxbow. In the 2018 Oxbow study by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the first recommendation was to Focus on the River:
“The river should be treated as a community amenity rather than as a backyard. To foster connections, the city should look for opportunities to connect publicly accessible streets, trails, and open spaces to the river… and the river trail and river-edge landscape should be extended, maintained, and improved to the maximum extent possible.…”
We urge the Planning Commission to recommend that the ULI recommendations be clearly added as part of General Plan policy for the Oxbow area. And the Napa River needs to remain as its heart.