Is Angwin rural, or is it a college town?

By Jay Miller

The recent debate about Angwin development within the urban bubble has been spearheaded by a group that claims that Angwin is rural and needs to be preserved as such.

I would contend that Angwin is in fact not rural and instead should be considered a “college town” similar to many such towns which have grown up around an educational institution in an agricultural setting.

It is my belief that not a single person who bought a house or land in Angwin failed to realize that there was a college at the center of the town. That being said, I don’t think that anyone moving into an area with such knowledge has reason to complain. Anyone who bought a house next to a zoo, for example, would be considered unreasonable if they were to complain that the smells and sounds from the zoo ruined their lifestyle. They would be considered even more unreasonable if they tried to get the zoning changed to prevent the zoo from building and expanding on its own land as it saw fit.

Early in the debate, I spoke with leaders of the Save Rural Angwin movement and asked them a pointed question about the college at the center of the Urban Bubble in question. I asked, “What if the organization that supports and owns the college chose to expand this campus because of its large land holdings and its central location on the West Coast? Would you have any grounds on which to prevent the college from growing from its current size of about 1,500 students to say, 4,000 to 6,000 students, and all the development which that would require?”

The response was typically silence because the individual realized the audacity of what they were trying to do in preventing a landowner from using his own land to suit his own purposes. (This was only stated for purposes of illustration, as the college has no such plans to my knowledge.)

The flap over the Urban Bubble is just another round in this attempt by one landowner to tell another landowner what to do with his property. In truth, Angwin is unlikely to ever incorporate formally as a town, but that does not make it any less a historic center of population, a college town if you will, which has been recognized for more than a century. And it does not make the urban bubble any less applicable today and into the foreseeable future. If we truly want Angwin to be a rural area, I would suggest a modest proposal for consideration: That all of us who have moved into this area in the last 150 years or so should leave and return the land to its original state. I don’t think that is what the opponents of the Urban Bubble have in mind, but it seems the logical conclusion to such a line of thinking. Where does one stop in determining who should and should not be allowed into our de facto “gated community?”

Around Napa County there are many hidden hilltops and truly rural forested areas from which to choose when purchasing land or a home. To my knowledge, none of these other locations has a college or anything remotely like it nearby. So I would say to those who want to change the Urban Bubble in Angwin, leave it alone (or maybe even expand it to reflect the reality of the Angwin community that is currently in place). The Urban Bubble reflects the reality of the college town that has grown up around the institution over the last 100 years. And may I kindly suggest to anyone who doesn’t like living in a community with a college at its center, you are welcome to move to another truly “rural” location somewhere else in Napa County.

(Miller is a financial aid counselor at PUC and lives in Angwin).

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