St. Helena General Plan Update Steering Committee

A voluntary organization of residents, property owners and business people working in partnership to enhance the visual, functional and economically sustainable character of downtown St. Helena for the benefit of residents and visitors.

October 7, 2007

Ms. Audrey Knight, Chair

St. Helena General Plan Update Steering Committee

City of St. Helena

1480 Main Street

St. Helena, CA 94574

Re: Community Input to the General Plan Update Process
Dear Ms. Knight and St. Helena General Plan Update Steering Committee:
We write this letter on behalf of the St. Helena Downtown Renaissance Task Force in an effort to provide the Committee with a summary of the community’s deliberations and the conclusions that have been developed over the last year.
Background on Our Downtown Revitalization Process
Since our first appearance in front of the City Council in June 2006, we have held a series of ongoing meetings and open houses, spearheaded one downtown clean-up effort, and hired urban planners and a landscape designer - all in close cooperation with the City of St. Helena.
The Public was invited to our first town hall meeting a year ago to consider ways improve the appearance and vitality of our downtown. Our goal was to determine what should be done to make our downtown area more pedestrian-friendly, safer for our residents and visitors, and more attractive to those who live and work in our wonderful town. Businesses, organizations, city staff and elected officials, property owners, and residents were all invited to participate in the process.
In cooperation with the city, we engaged urban planners and designers, Bruce Race and Cliff Lowe, to assist us with the planning process. When the results of our professionally facilitated Town Hall meeting were available in December 2006, we called a second meeting to report back to the community on March 3, 2007.
The results of our initial work are presented in the report entitled St. Helena Downtown Renaissance Summary report – December 2006, which has previously been provided to your committee. We urge you to carefully consider the community consensus represented by this report, most importantly the Planning Principles on Pages 3 and 4, which we ask you to incorporate into the General Plan Update.
In recent months, Cliff Lowe, under the terms of a small contract jointly funded by the City of St. Helena and the Chamber of Commerce, continued to advise our committee and provide urban design expertise.
Our committee has made significant progress working on the design of a revitalized downtown. Our design included improvements to sidewalk paving, trees, benches, newspaper racks, parking, public bathrooms, and several other categories. We presented these design concepts to invited guests at a reception at the Caldwell-Snyder Gallery on July 11, 2007, and received additional important feedback.
At this point, the committee is comprised of more than 150 participants working in several subcommittees on design, long range planning, downtown organizational concepts, and fundraising. It is our intention to continue to work with the City to achieve substantial progress in revitalizing our downtown.
Our Recommendations for a Revitalized Downtown
Based on the input we have received from the community and general public through the process described above, we offer the following thoughts regarding three different topics pertinent to the downtown area: (1) Economic Vitality, (2)Visual Appeal and Land Use, (3) Traffic and Circulation, Pedestrian Movement, and Parking.
Economic Vitality: We want to maintain what makes St. Helena unique, namely its historic charm and small town character as well as its historical connection to agriculture. In order to do so, St. Helena must maintain a strong economic engine to remain attractive and viable for residents and visitors.

1. 
   Recognize that the wine industry will continue to bring more tourism to St. Helena. By recognizing this, the City can manage tourism for the benefit of the local community. As the recent tourism study by the Napa Valley Conference and Visitors Bureau demonstrated, visitor spending positively impacts every segment of the county's economy in a significant way with income from tourist-generated dollars. These impact needs to be managed to make sure that it improves the quality of life for residents.
   
2. 
   Revitalize the downtown. This should include the re-establishment of the lodging options in the downtown area, as well as the addition of retail shopping and restaurants. Improvements to parking and pedestrian corridors will get people out of their vehicles so they may explore downtown on foot, and thereby reduce traffic. Finally, the increased revenues will help fund the city’s infrastructure needs.
   
3. 
   Promote a plan for developing, managing, and maintaining downtown, which may include an autonomous downtown organization.
   

Visual Appeal and Land Use - The Downtown Renaissance Committee has been working on a comprehensive plan to revitalize and improve the appearance of downtown. First and foremost, we believe that historic preservation and character must be the cornerstone of all design decisions. In addition to this, we would like to do the following:

1. 
   Expand the historic charming Main Street look to the rest of downtown.
   
2. 
   Improve the streetscape experience to introduce a consistent style of benches, bike racks, crosswalks, sidewalks, planters, etc.
   
3. 
   Support continued tree planting and maintenance.
   
4. 
   Promote gathering spaces and events for local residents: Farmers Market, Harvest Festival
   
5. 
   Explore relocating City Hall.
   

Pedestrian Movement, Parking and Traffic - We understand that Main Street will remain a state highway, and therefore, we need to look to mitigate the traffic and parking impacts on the downtown area. We believe this requires a multifaceted approach which should include improving pedestrian movement, the creation of off-highway parking alternatives, and the improvement of traffic flow through and across St. Helena.

1. 
   Pedestrian Movement
   
   1. 
      Enhance walking, biking, and wheelchair experience with clear paths, shade, benches, paths, bike racks. Utilize creek sides possibly with public easements. Focus east-west movement to 2-3 convenient axes.
      
   2. 
      Create one stunning North-South meander path on each side of downtown, with 1-2 east-west links across Main Street. These paths could be part of enhanced development of Money Way and/or Railroad Avenue with live/work arrangements and open air cafes. Some areas for consideration are:
      
      1. 
         Money Way with N-S extensions
         
      2. 
         Railroad Avenue with N-S extensions
         
      3. 
         Hunt Street connects with west-side paseo
         
      4. 
         Pope Street connects with Mitchell
         
      5. 
         Adams; Pine
         
2. 
   Parking
   
   1. 
      Maintain on-street parking where possible, considering that some spaces may need to be removed to improve Main Street traffic flow and/or possible plaza options.
      
   2. 
      Add 3-5 satellite parking areas within one block of the downtown area; within 5-minute walk of downtown epicenter (Adams/Main)
      
   3. 
      Explore developing parking spaces for buses and limos
      
   4. 
      Explore possibility of using daytime lots for public night use
      
   5. 
      Explore resizing of the existing parking spaces to improve parking density.
      

3. 
   Traffic
   
   1. 
      Develop off-highway alternatives for North-South and East-West traffic where possible.
      
   2. 
      Improve East-West traffic where possible.
      
   3. 
      Improve links to Silverado Trail.
      
   4. 
      Explore changing truck delivery times/routes.
      
   5. 
      Work with bus companies, limos, etc. to coordinate parking and circulation.
      
   6. 
      Create traffic calming features wherever possible.
      

Thank you in advance for your consideration. Like you, this group has spent many hours in meetings and gathering information, knowing the timing and importance of the St. Helena General Plan Update process. St. Helena’s General Plan is a crucial piece of work; the time to plan for the future is now. We believe that the future of our downtown, in fact the future of our very city, is at stake. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to meet or need clarification of any of the points we made in this letter.

Sincerely yours,


The Downtown Renaissance Task Force

By the Steering Committee: Bob Beckstrom, Chair; Jim Aldred; Tom Allen; John Kelly; Skip Lane; Nancy Levenberg; Rudy Papale; and Mike Reynolds