Mr. Pumpkin Patch wants your vote

Wilcoxson, with deep Napa roots, looks to expand south county marketplace

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

Billy Wilcoxson has an entrepreneurial spirit that won’t quit. It’s earned him a spot on the county ballot for the second time in 12 years.

Wilcoxson is known to thousands of Napans as Mr. Pumpkin Patch. He sold three quarters of a million pounds of pumpkins last fall at his holiday operation on Stanly Lane.

But Wilcoxson does more than sell pumpkins on Stanly Lane. He runs a Christmas tree lot, sells gourmet foods and antiques year-round, holds grape rootstock in cold storage, produces furnishings made from wine barrels, sells used bales of straw and rents space for a seasonal produce stand.

Leaving no part of his four acres fallow, Wilcoxson also grows 2,000 lavender plants, 300 olive trees, 200 grapevines and 200 rose bushes. Two years ago he built his house there, planting his front yard in corn and sunflowers. The view out his kitchen window last summer was a lot like Kansas.

“I am a dreamer,” said Wilcoxson, a stocky, plain-speaking man who is universally known as Billy. “I work hard, but I have a good life and I have a good family.”

It took a countywide election in 1996 for Wilcoxson to be allowed to put a produce stand on Stanly Lane. Although the wine industry was aligned against him, Wilcoxson persuaded voters to make his property an exception to county policies that discourage new commercial activity on agricultural lands.

On Feb. 5, Wilcoxson is asking for a broader exemption. He wants to be able to prepare food and host wine tastings on the property. Napa County’s agricultural leadership is again in opposition.

What’s the fuss?

Wilcoxson, 51, says he cannot understand what all the fuss is about. Three generations of his Napa family — the Giovannonis — have started small and grown successful local businesses. It’s in his family’s genes.

His immigrant grandfather, Augustino Giovannoni, started a produce stand in the basement of his home on Brown Street in the 1920s. It grew into a community landmark, Giovannoni’s Market, before bowing to changing demographics and becoming a Mexican grocery.

That same entrepreneurial spirit propelled his uncle, Larry Giovannoni, to incorporate his Browns Valley home into a commercial center anchored by Browns Valley Market.

Another uncle, Albert Giovannoni, developed Napa Valley Marina and became a mover and shaker in Napa real estate. A cousin, Tony Giovannoni, owns Health Quest Fitness Center. Billy’s brother Ken Wilcoxson owns Basics Gym.

Billy is definitely a chip off the family block, Larry Giovannoni said. “Billy is a hard worker. He tries real hard. He does good,” he said.

“It was the way we were raised,” Larry Giovannoni said. “It was work, work, work and work harder. It was bred into us, I guess.”

Bill Wilcoxson, Billy’s father, remembers his son driving a produce truck into Oakland every night while still in high school. Upon graduating, he bought his own truck.

“Our entire family has been workaholics,” Bill Wilcoxson said. For 30 years Billy shopped the Oakland produce market at night, then worked all day making local deliveries, he said.

“He had a great constitution. He could do an awful lot without collapsing,” his father said.

Beyond pumpkins

These days Billy Wilcoxson, whose own two children have worked at Stanly Lane Marketplace, is trying to work smarter, not harder. His Stanly Lane Marketplace could be much more successful if he had a full-fledged deli operation and could attract tourists with wine tastings, he said. “This deli thing will get me over the hump,” he said.

In their ballot arguments against the deli and wine tasting, critics accuse Wilcoxson of creating a commercial “hodge-podge” at the entry to the Napa Valley. What started as a simple pumpkin patch has grown into something far more touristy, they say.

Billy Wilcoxson says he can’t understand why the wine industry is aligned against him, or why no one in the political establishment will openly support his expansion plans.

“The ballot thing is pretty frustrating. They’re trying to make me out a bad guy,” he said.

In the end, he will prevail, Wilcoxson said. After running Halloween and Christmas attractions for a quarter century, “I have the support of the people,” he said.

During last fall’s pumpkin season, Wilcoxson said he gathered more than 7,000 signatures from customers to qualify his commercial plans for the February ballot. To make sure he had enough, he paid friends to solicit 5,000 more.

This election will cost him $65,000, even though he saved on attorney fees by writing his initiative himself, Wilcoxson said. “I wanted it to come from me,” he said of his simply worded ballot arguments which he signs “Billy.”

Voters on his mind

Opponents accuse him of always having Machiavellian plans to build a major tourist attraction at the entry to the valley, but Wilcoxson insists he has only reacted to circumstances.

A quarter century ago, his Uncle Al pointed to the four-acre Stanly property, a remnant created when Caltrans relocated Highway 12 from Golden Gate Drive to its present configuration, and said he should buy it for his retirement. “He had that foresight,” Wilcoxson said.

He raised the $100,000 purchase price by selling assets and borrowing money, Wilcoxson said. He started out with pumpkins and a stand selling fruits and vegetables from his produce business.

He hatched plans for a marketplace only after the Napa County Flood Control District took his property, Napa Ice House, for the flood control project in 2001, Wilcoxson said.

“I had no place to go,” he said.

Because of zoning restrictions, Wilcoxson couldn’t move the ice business to Stanly Lane, but he was able to build cold storage for grape vines because the use was ag-related.

His Stanly Lane Marketplace can’t produce food for retail sale, but it can sell prepared sandwiches and drinks under the terms of the 1996 initiative approving a produce operation.

With the new traffic light at Highway 12 and Stanly, his business is positioned to attract visitor traffic like never before, he said.

His customers are his best advocates, said Wilcoxson, who displayed hundreds of expressions of support on outdoor boards during the holidays.

“I didn’t go to college, but I’m no dummy. I wanted to keep (the election) on everybody’s mind,” he said.

His is a classic American story of a man with a dream who overcomes adversity to build a business and support a family, Wilcoxson said. Few merchants would have the heart for two ballot fights, “but I’m not a quitter,” he said.

The average working person can identify with what he is trying to do, Wilcoxson said. “I do it all. Ask anybody who comes out here. They see me working seven days a week,” he said.

To show how much physical labor he does, Wilcoxson invited a reporter to feel the bicep on his right arm. It felt like a ball of steel.

“It’s not like it’s a big corporation doing it,” Wilcoxson said. “It’s me.”

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