An artful parking job

City, county dedicate largest garage in Napa

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

It looks good. It hosts public art that pays tribute to Napa history. It even has a big clock that tells the time. And if that weren’t enough, it parks cars, too.

Napa’s biggest, fanciest garage opened Friday evening with 485 spaces in downtown’s most jammed parking zone — next to county offices, the city-county library and growing commercial development on the river.

“This was a garage that was never going to happen,” Napa County Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht told a crowd of more than 100 at the dedication ceremony.

The city and county exchanged the garage as an “engagement gift” when they agreed earlier this decade to begin working cooperatively on housing and other matters, Wagenknecht said.

Compared to the three garages the city built downtown in the 1980s, “this actually looks very nice,” Wagenknecht said.

Napa Mayor Jill Techel agreed, saying designers “learned from our forefathers’ mistakes.” Unlike the “scary dark” old ones, the new garage is spacious and bright, she said.

It will no longer be a struggle to park when visiting county offices, including the jail, or trying to dine at the Napa Mill complex, Techel said.

Napa County Public Works Director Bob Peterson, who retired Friday, drove the first vehicle into the garage. He roared to the fourth-story roof, then looked out and waved to the crowd.

The ceremony’s dramatic climax was the unveiling of a 19-foot-high piece of public art on the Main Street facade, made by local artist Gordon Huether.

Seventy-five hubcaps from the Hubcap Ranch in Pope Valley border a stainless steel panel. Etched onto the panel is a photo of a 1962 display window in the old Carithers department store designed by Huether’s father, Hubert. In the display, a stylishly dressed female mannequin is at risk of being splattered by a can of paint.

Since the original Carithers was torn down and replaced with a parking garage, it’s somehow fitting that a tribute to the golden age of downtown shopping would be paid at yet another garage, officials said.

The county’s decision to select Huether’s design for a $25,000 commission generated controversy, but that’s OK, Wagenknecht said. “It will be a piece of our culture for a long time,” he said.

Dr. Lee Block, who was on the selection committee that recommend Huether’s work, said this was a “major piece of public art” for downtown.

“It preserves a part of history which is ephemeral and always in danger of being lost,” Block said.

Huether, who was in Germany competing for another commissioned piece of art, sent a letter that was read to the audience. “Remember that art matters and art can’t hurt you,” he said.

The garage, with a brick and stucco face, cost $15.7 million. The county used money from its building reserves, while the city’s redevelopment agency contributed property tax revenues from downtown.

Three businesses contributed $3.9 million, allowing for the garage to have a fourth floor.

As a result Napa Mill, the Riverfront project under construction on Main Street and Andrea Schrader, owner of three nearby properties, have exclusive use of 120 spaces. Additional spaces are set aside for county-owned vehicles.

The garage has 330 public spaces, including those available to county employees. The garage offers a net increase of about 350 spaces since it sits on the site of a former 100-space surface lot and wiped out street parking on Fifth Street.

David Finigan, Napa’s city manager in the 1980s, agreed that the city’s first garages were much tighter and darker. The city had to squeeze in spaces to support the new retail at Napa Town Center and Mervyns, he said.

Garages were a “radical new idea” in the 1980s, Finigan said. Attitudes have since changed. The garage at Fifth and Main should win popular acceptance, he said.

Harry Price, the developer of Napa Mill, said the garage is “long overdue.” Customers at Napa Mill should no longer have to struggle for parking, he said.

Don Ridenhour, assistant county public works director, praised West Bay Builders of Novato, a design-build firm, for bringing in the project on time and on budget.

Solar panels on the roof provide most of the garage’s electricity, making the structure a “green” building, Ridenhour said.

The city will study the new garage’s impact on downtown parking for at least several months before deciding whether to adjust rules at other garages and surface lots, said Jennifer LaLiberté, a city redevelopment officials.

“We want to take a fresh look at the whole thing once the new garage is open,” she said.

The Fifth Street garage will be open daily from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m.

 It can be entered from Main and Coombs streets.

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