The designers of a new Yountville inn and spa are heading back to the drawing board after hearing neighbors’ qualms about the fate of a heritage oak tree and plans to add a second story to the so-called Bardessano project.

Discussions between the Bardessano family and town officials regarding the proposed development at the corner of Yount Street and Finnell Road have been churning for close to 10 years. On Tuesday night, the Yountville Town Council delayed yet again the Bardessanos’ plans to begin building a 62-unit inn and spa.

The latest plan revisions that stoked neighborhood anxiety included the removal of a heritage oak tree to make way for drainage pipes, the proposed drainage of the property’s run-off into Hopper Creek, and the addition of second stories to a few buildings after engineers discovered that Yountville’s extremely high water table rules out a basement.

“I’d hate to see us cut down another oak tree, and see the town defoliated,” said Richard Gervasio, who lives close to the property and also serves on the town’s zoning design and review board. He mentioned that two oaks were recently felled for the development of Washington Park and a site near Oak Circle. “Trees are hard to come by. It just didn’t grow overnight.”

Next-door neighbor Bill Craig lamented how the recently proposed second floors would cut off a view that his family has “north and west as far as the eye can see.”

“A transient community will be able to gaze down into our backyard and into my son’s bedroom,” Craig added.

Ultimately the five town council members seemed to empathize with neighbors’ concerns, voting unanimously to send lead developer Philip Sherburne and project architects and engineers back to the drawing board to try and allay the residents’ concerns.

Even so, some council members warned neighbors that the Bardessano plan, in its essence, has already been approved, and ultimately more traffic and urbanization are on the way.

Councilman Steven Rosa referred to other projects that were built despite similar flack from neighbors, such as the Heritage Estates subdivision to the east, also built by the Bardessanos in 1990.

“It’s a tough thing to change. I was born in here 55 years ago, and you could have bought the whole town for a dollar back then,” Rosa said.

He recalled how the flocks of pheasants that once lived where the golf course now sits are gone. And how a friend recently reminisced that as a kid he could sit on his aunt’s porch, where Washington Park now is, and see clear to St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, one of Yountville’s southernmost landmarks.

“People would like to think Yountville’s still a quaint little agricultural town, but it’s not,” Rosa said. “Ten percent of the population are absentee owners. And people have the right to develop their property.”

Some neighbors said they still support the concept of an inn and spa facility and trust the good judgment of the Bardessanos — a longtime Yountville family that some referred to as friends.

Mainly neighbors took issue with the latest project revisions, which were vying for the council’s final approval and essentially green light to build Tuesday night. Several said the new changes morphed the project considerably from what the council originally approved.

Because the construction of a basement for office space was eliminated, the architects squeezed offices into second stories and also into what was previously spa space. The proposed changes would eliminate spa space and redirect spa services to the rooms of inn guests, thus reducing the public use of the facility — a change that concerned Mayor Cynthia Saucerman.

“Now we’re being asked to discount criteria we used to make our original decision by lessening the spa facilities available to the public,” Saucerman said.

The public hearing on the Bardessano project will continue at the town council’s next meeting, scheduled for Feb. 20.

“It’s not the intention of this council to delay the project,” Saucerman told Sherburne. “Hopefully you can come back with some workable solutions.”