A new park in Healdsburg? One idea is being floated for the future

Healdsburg-born landscape architect Eric Arneson has for years envisioned a riverfront park to replace the gravel mine on the Russian River Bendway.

photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
The remaining conveyor belt support towers stand on the
Syar Industries gravel mine along the Bendway in the Russian
River in Healdsburg. June 25th, 2024.

Where the Russian River winds and wraps around Fitch Mountain and Healdsburg, crowds follow.

Many flock to the cold water at Veterans Memorial Beach, but could there be another place for people to dip their toes?

It’s called the Bendway Park, or at least that’s the name Eric Arneson’s giving it.

"The main goal of this design is basically to connect people to the river," Arneson said.

A landscape architect based in Santa Barbara, Arneson was born and raised in Healdsburg, and he's spent plenty of time swimming in the Russian River.

"I remember as a kid, we'd always floated down the river, go kayaking down the river," Arneson said. "It was always such a beautiful experience, then at the very end when we're getting to the Memorial Beach, you end up going past the corner, which is the Bendway."

So what sits at the Bendway now?

"The majority of the riverfront in Healdsburg proper is actually occupied by the gravel site," Arneson said.

A gravel mine and asphalt plant sits just upstream from the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge and popular Veterans Memorial Beach on Healdsburg Avenue.

Syar Industries has owned the site since 1986, though the mining site has been in operation for more than 75 years.

An important aggregate for industrial and construction uses, gravel has been mined from the Russian River since the 1800’s Arneson noted.

"It is a service that we need to build things," Arneson said. "We need concrete, we need gravel, we need asphalt; but is right on the Russian River inside the town of Healdsburg the best spot for that?"

There’s been no mining at Syar’s Bendway site for over 20 years, according to Healdsburg Community Development Director Scott Duiven.

"My understanding is that the permits they had for removing gravel have expired and they were doing some operational stuff out there, but for the most part, I think there's not much going on out there anymore," Duiven said.

Syar was purchased by fellow materials company Vulcan in 2022.

Arneson noted that Vulcan leases the property.

"This is one of the sites that they're looking to abandon because I think they see that writing on the wall that we can't extract gravel here, and it's basically just a giant lot," Arneson said.

A representative for Vulcan Materials, Syar’s parent company, told KRCB News they plan to exit the site once the lease expires in August 2025.

Earlier this year, the 88-acre property was listed for sale as an “ outstanding development opportunity ."

It's being marketed as prime real estate for a hotel and luxury mixed use development, and that's come as no surprise for Arneson.

"I knew that some developer would come out and say, this is going to become a giant beer garden, adult playground kind of thing with a bunch of houses crammed in it," Arneson said. "[I] wanted to come up with something that would actually be beneficial for the people of Healdsburg that live there, not just people that are visiting."

So far, no buyer has emerged publicly, despite the potential for redevelopment of the large property. A real estate broker handling the property’s sale declined to comment to KRCB News, citing confidentiality concerns.

Arneson said he thinks converting part of the Syar site to park land would fill an important hole in Healdsburg’s fabric.

"There's not currently a really good connection to the river," Arneson said. "There's Veterans Memorial Beach park there, that is a connection point, but it's really just a beach. There's no like integration with nature. It's just a beach frontage with a lawn."

Enter Arneson’s Bendway Park design.

"What I was re-imagining was something that kind of integrates you into the riparian forest and the local ecologies, and the native ecosystem of the river," Arneson said.

First introduced in 2016 as his undergraduate thesis project at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Arneson’s re-imagination of the Bendway riverfront garnered an award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

For Arneson, integrating the contours of the park with the shifting environment of the Russian River remains a big emphasis of the design.

"It also works well with the seasonal flooding that will definitely occur every single year," Arneson said. "So I designed a pathway that is at an elevation that would be above the hundred year floodplain that would not only serve as a year round access throughout the park, but it would also serve as somewhat of a levee wall."

Access to the water’s edge is a given too.

"Along certain points of this pathway there would be descending staircases and accessible ramps, which would lead to the riverfront," Arneson said. "We really wanted to come up with a proposal that made it as easy as possible to access the river."

Arneson also pointed out that “access” doesn’t simply mean physical accessibility.

"Making it free so you don't have to pay to park here, I think that's critical," Arneson said. "[Because] Veterans Memorial Park is something that you have to pay, we want to make it something that's for everybody that lives here."

The decades of gravel mining and commercial activity have left their impacts on the river, most visibly the industrial infrastructure; but much like Seattle’s landmark Gas Works Park, Arneson feels there’s a place for the Bendway’s remnants of industry.

"It would be nice to keep some of those, celebrate the transformation," Arneson said. "It was once this industrial site, which damaged the river so much, but keeping these elements reminds us of what it used to be. They're also quite monumental and impressive when you stand up next to [them]."

He said none more so than the imposing conveyor towers.

"The four towers, a lot of people thought of them as a smokestack of some kind, but they're actually conveyor belt support structures," Arneson said. "There was like a conveyor belt on top of them, and that was for extracting gravel straight from the beach. If you go on the site, these things are massive and it's really a testament for how much land that they moved and transformed."

While Arneson said he hopes to see the Bendway leave its extractive history in the past, he also envisions a useful future for the area beyond recreation.

"I'm proposing a fairly large storm water basin that would be able to capture hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in every storm event, and then this would percolate back into the groundwater system," Arneson said.

photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Industrial remains loom over the Russian River along the Bendway in Healdsburg.
Photographed from Badger Park, on the opposite bank, on June 25th, 2024.

But, Arneson says he is also realistic about the Bendway’s future.

"Part of the design is also allocating a certain portion of the site to a developer, whoever that ends up being," Arneson said.

"It's the fact of the world that someone needs to make money to make things happen," Arneson said. "So some type of housing element, a hotel, and then maybe some light industrial or something, maybe some restaurants, things like that."

More than anything Arneson imagines a future Bendway with a place for everyone.

"My design is not something that I want to see really implemented exactly," Arneson said. "I just want to see anything like it. So any type of park in any shape or form I think would be a success in this scenario."

"The worst thing we want to see is a hotel abutting straight up along the river," Arneson said. "I think that would be a disaster on so many levels."

From the city’s standpoint, any big changes to the “south entry area”, that's the roughly 160 acre pocket of Healdsburg east of the Memorial Bridge, are a ways off according to Community Development Director Scott Duiven.

"That area currently has no municipal services," Duiven said. "There's no water, no sewer, no storm water, and so the city's general plan has long called for the preparation of a plan that would look at, you know, the appropriateness of industrial uses along that stretch of the river, how to maximize public access along and to the river, what the appropriate land uses are."

Duiven said a 'specific plan' will have to come first. That's a 2 to 3 year, million-plus-dollar effort.

"So we're at the beginning in terms of the fact that we've identified the need for planning effort in that area, but we have not commenced a planning effort, which would involve robust community engagement and input," Duiven said.

Duiven said a park, like the Bendway Eric Arneson imagines, isn’t out of the question.

"We recognize that that particular property is a really important property given its size, but also given the fact that I think it has almost a mile of riverfront and there's certainly some level of community benefit that could come along with future development that includes public access and recreational type of amenities," Duiven said. "But at this point in time, it's too early in that process to really say what that's gonna look like."

While a park of the magnitude of Arneson’s Bendway isn’t happening tomorrow, Duiven noted the city is looking to make the river accessible on the opposite bank.

"There is Badger Park across the way, which is an existing park, and they're looking at some improvements that would provide access to the river from that side," Duiven said.

Arneson said he hopes, even with the competing visions and clear hurdles for the Bendway’s future, that a park with room for everyone will one day come to be.

"This is a long-term project, and they should have this on their radar as something that can definitely be a huge asset for not only Healdsburg, but the region, to have this riverfront space accessible to the public," Arneson said.