Old Napa vs. New Napa

By MICHAEL HALEY

Ancient Hindu myths always characterized the Goddesses as both the source of all creation as well as destruction, and nowhere is that more evident than here in Napa. Napa is changing and for some it is proving to be a painful birth. In order to bring in the new some of the old has to be destroyed and carted off, literally.

But the kind of people who live here are changing as well, and that is perhaps the most painful part of the transition for many.

You can’t have creation without destruction and in that regard Ancient Wisdom is indeed wise. You can’t create a new city without destroying the old one, and therein lays the problem.

Part of the controversy that rages is being epitomized by recent positions our Mayor has taken over several issues, most recently the uses of the Borreo Building. It was turned over to Channel Properties for management but not without a No vote from Mayor Techel, who was concerned that there was not enough public access, i.e. there was not enough for locals.

We are sort of in a position of needing a "peace dividend", like Americans expected after the end of the Cold War. I would call it a "tourist dividend.”

It goes like this, if we are going to have to put up with all the new hotels, the conversion of downtown over to high end wine tasting rooms, restaurants, etc, and the attendant traffic and crowding, we expect a dividend for the locals. Yes, a taxpayers dividend, but a cultural dividend as well.

What that means is that the new Napa needs to have local serving business and cultural activities. Most places that have high tourist traffic manage it by separating out parts of the city, like San Francisco with Fisherman‚s Wharf, or Orlando with International Drive. That isn't going to work for Napa, It’s too small and the geography and the nature of the business doesn’t lend itself to that. The challenge is to find a way to make the new things we have coming attractive to the locals as well. We need to integrate local serving and tourist serving.

It will be tough, and if we can it may well be a first. But it is a worthy goal.

The further complicating issue is that the nature of who is local is gradually changing too.

The old Napa is a place of blue-collar workers and heavy industry. The new Napa is the exact opposite. Even with 1 percent growth, that means a lot of new people, about 13,000 over the next decade alone. 70% of the new people are expected to be retirees, which are generally more well heeled than the general population, and will need different sorts of services and businesses than a younger working class population.

What we have then is not only a changing business downtown, with more tourism, but we also have a local population that is changing demographically. Older, wealthier, fewer children. Like it or not, Napa is gentrifying.

It’s a scary thought, especially when put so bluntly. It is not what a lot of people here want. But the truth is that it is happening organically, and is not the result of a planned effort. That also means it is a powerful force and will not be redirected easily, even if we wanted to. For one thing, it would require massive building of housing to reduce housing costs.

Can we include local serving businesses downtown, and can we make the new tourist serving ones attractive to locals? I think we can, but I agree with the Mayor that more thought needs to be put into this.

The elements of being able to pull that off are starting to emerge, and the more consciously we try to make it that way, the better off we are going to be.

What we can keep from the old days though, besides the history and some of the older beautiful architecture that lends so much character, is the sense that Napa is for the locals and is a real place where people who live here, well, really live here.

Who the local people are will be different though, with different kinds of jobs and different needs. It’s not going to be ice skating rinks and pool halls, more likely art galleries and smaller live music venues. It also doesn’t mean we won‚t have some of the former, but the trend is clear. To do that, new businesses downtown need to bear that in mind, and we should support creative solutions to making this work.

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