Why is Andrea Schrader, owner of a local title insurance company, pumping nearly $1 million into the new city-county parking garage about to begin construction on Main Street?

Schrader is buying 30 spaces on the third floor, yet she doesn’t own any nearby businesses nor does she have a fleet of private vehicles in need of shelter.

She’s thinking long-term, Schrader said in an interview. As residential and commercial development blossoms near the flood-proofed Napa River, owning 30 parking spaces downtown could turn out to be a smart move, she said.

A year and a half ago, Schrader bought the three houses on the west side of Coombs Street, between Division and Fifth streets, from George Altamura, a major downtown commercial property owner.

These houses are across from the Napa City-County Library and, more importantly, across from the 484-space garage scheduled to go up this summer.

With that much parking available across the street, Schrader is thinking of redeveloping her property with a mixed-use office-condo project. She can build a larger development if she uses the garage to satisfy all or part of her project’s parking requirement.

Schrader said she won’t work on a development plan for at least two years. She will wait for the garage to be completed in 2008, then see whether the city wants to rezone her block for more intensive development, she said.

Her 15,000-square-foot parcel borders an Old Town neighborhood. Two of the three houses on her property are considered of historic importance.

Anything she proposes would have to blend with the character of the nearby Victorian houses, Schrader said. “I would want to do something attractive, something people would be proud of — living there, working there.”

Cassandra Walker, the city’s redevelopment manager, said Schrader was being “visionary,” trying to anticipate the Napa of the future. More intensive uses are proposed for downtown, with higher buildings than in the past, she said.

But Schrader’s property is not zoned for such intensive development, which makes her plans “somewhat speculative,” Walker said.

Walker noted that the neighborhood north and east of Schrader’s property will undergo significant changes in the years ahead. Two blocks of riverfront will be transformed into a retail-office-restaurant-condo project, the city and county are building a garage and the county may develop another government office building on the site of the former Sullivan homeless shelter at Third and Coombs.

Schrader’s most immediate neighbor to the north is Treadway & Wigger Funeral Chapel, which recently entertained an offer to sell its location to Napa County.

“We respectfully turned down the option of selling to the county,” chapel owner Ted Wigger said Monday. “We’re exactly where we want to be.”

Treadway & Wigger has operated at its Coombs Street location since 1916, Wigger said. “We’ve spent a lot of money getting our property where we want it,” he said.

Schrader said she will be paying at least $900,000 for the 30 spaces in the garage. Napa Mill and the planned Napa Riverfront are each putting up $1.5 million for the rights to 45 spaces apiece.

It’s possible, Schrader said, that she will never pursue development, but will resell the property. In the meantime, she may test the market for leasing private parking spaces in the new garage.