After hearing citizen concerns about global warming and loss of older homes, the city of Napa Planning Commission Thursday endorsed plans for a redevelopment project for the Soscol Avenue approach to downtown.

The city intends to use property tax revenues to improve traffic circulation and solve drainage problems that will remain even after the Napa River flood control project is finished.

Once these impediments to private investment are removed, Soscol between Imola Avenue and downtown should blossom with new commercial and residential activity, officials believe.

Only a few residents turned out for the redevelopment hearing. City officials had previously organized public information sessions and meetings with property owners and tenants to explain the program.

Citing the threat of global warming, John Stephens of the Living Rivers Council said the city should not be planning major growth in the low-lying Soscol area.

“Global warming will have a profound effect on our world and our town,” Stephens said. “We need to avoid catastrophe before it happens.”

City officials are expecting some 800 additional housing units and 1.9 million square feet of commercial development if the risk of regular flooding can be eliminated.

Much of the new development would occur on Gasser Foundation land, located west and north of South Napa Marketplace along the river.

Additional housing would be encouraged around a planned transit center on Burnell Street, next to Napa Valley Exposition. Soscol would remain Napa’s Auto Row, with more intensive commercial development encouraged between Soscol and Silverado Trail.

The project’s environmental impact report lightly addresses global warming. The state is just beginning to develop regulations to reduce the impact of new development on the planet’s atmosphere, staff said.

Commissioner Arthur Roosa called global warming a “moving target” that can be prevented if the world’s nations respond to the threat.

Most of the proposed redevelopment area will continue to flood even after the river project is complete, said Cassandra Walker, the city’s redevelopment manager. By tapping future increases in the area’s property tax revenue, the project would pay for drainage improvements that siphon runoff from the eastern hills and pump it into the river, she said.

Kurt Wold, who lives on Third Street opposite Napa Valley Exposition, complained that development would threaten his neighborhood’s small homes built by Italian immigrants.

Plans to rezone three blocks along Third and Fourth streets between Soscol and the Expo for multi-family housing would mean the end to many of these houses, Wold said.

Walker said the new zoning would encourage owners to redevelop their properties, but this would take years, if not decades.

The agency plans to identify houses of historic interest and offer incentives to owners to preserve them, said Jennifer LaLiberté, redevelopment’s senior project coordinator.

The City Council will hold a workshop on the new redevelopment plan at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 18. A council hearing to adopt the plan is set for the evening of Oct. 16.

A report on the project’s financial impacts on other taxing entities will be available later this month.