Sale of downtown Napa land for hotel, condo project gets City Council OK

A development to include a 165-room hotel, 77 market-rate condos and roughly 15,000 square feet of retail space is moving forward in downtown Napa.

The Napa City Council this week unanimously authorized the sale of a parking lot and public plaza to be used as space for the development, which will stretch from First to Pearl streets and replace current businesses, including Kohl’s.

The sale includes a 0.75-acre parking lot at the southeast corner of Pearl and Coombs streets and the 0.18-acre Dwight Murray Plaza to San Ramon-based developer Coombs Steet LLC for $870,000.

The developer purchased the parcel where Kohl’s sits, at 1116 First St., in 2020. Two years later, the city approved the firm to redevelop the site into a two-building, mixed-use project.

Vin Smith, the city’s community development director, said as part of the deal the developers will provide the city another plaza or walkway space that would bisect the area of Kohl’s, from east to west. That would connect the city’s 9/11 Memorial Garden area with the First Street business area behind Archer Hotel.

Smith said he expects the city and developers to finish a development agreement for the project this year and construction plans submitted soon after.

Council members generally expressed excitement about the project, and how it will transform the area and better connect downtown.

Mayor Scott Sedgley said Dwight Murray Plaza, which opened in 1974, is a remnant of a downtown redevelopment campaign. He said the city, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, looked at redoing the plaza but canceled plans after the budget tanked.

“I think now that might have been a positive thing, that we didn’t spend a lot of park money to redevelop it at the time,” he said.

Council member Beth Painter said she viewed the project in terms of the city trying to create vibrant spaces along the Napa River. But she said the city doesn’t have vibrant connections and walkways to tie those places together.

The Kohl’s building is a barrier to that connectivity, she said.

“I think we want to be proud of what we are doing, in the sense of why people are coming here,” Painter said. “We have a really unique opportunity with the walkways along the river to continue to develop that as our signature and our piece.”

Kohl’s was slated to move to a vacant lot near Soscol Avenue and Gasser Drive, as a 55,000 square-foot anchor to the planned Soscol Square project approved in 2021. That project hasn’t yet broken ground.

You can reach Staff Writer Edward Booth at 707-521-5281 or edward.booth@pressdemocrat.com .