Healdsburg limits future downtown hotel projects

The Healdsburg City Council finalized a plan Monday to ban future hotels along its central plaza while also capping the number of rooms that could be built in the downtown area.

The 4-1 vote follows the council’s decision earlier this month to advance the ordinance, which also establishes a permitting process for developers wishing to construct hotels or guesthouses in the 10-block downtown core. Other areas of the Wine County hamlet zoned for a mix of homes and businesses will also require the special conditional permit, while commercial lodging will remain restricted in all other parts of the city.

The ordinance sets the number of rooms allowed along the central retail plaza to its present total of 67, and limits new lodging projects to five or fewer rooms, with no more than five rooms on each side of downtown streets.

Moving forward, all hotels will also be required to provide one parking space per room on site, plus one space for every two employees.

Vice Mayor David Hagele, who was unanimously selected Healdsburg’s next mayor Monday, was the lone dissenting vote in both cases. He contended he was unsure if the existing number of rooms in the plaza district was the right total without further study or discussion. Rather than accepting a five-room maximum on each side of the street, he also preferred establishing an overall cap downtown similar to the council’s decision with the plaza district.

“I think there’s consensus on the council that nobody wants a ginormous hotel anywhere downtown or in the plaza,” Hagele said earlier this month. “The conversations we’ve had leading up to this point, I absolutely get. I absolutely have a concern about an oversaturation of hotels in Healdsburg. I just don’t know that there’s the dire need to do this right now.”

Tension over the proliferation of hotel development in the city of 12,000 people bubbled up last year as part of a larger debate about balancing the needs of full-time residents versus those of visitors who seek respite in the north county town with deep ties to the wine industry. In August, the City Council also unanimously approved an ordinance that limited the number of wine tasting rooms in the downtown area.

The lodging cap was pushed by Residents for Balance Downtown, a group formed by three longtime homeowners who argued that additional hotels, namely in the downtown, threatened Healdsburg’s small-town character.

“It was a 16-month struggle to try to convince people,” said Bruce Abramson, a 29-year resident and one of the group’s co-founders. “The main goal on this was to stop this overconcentration and the kind of hotel frenzy. Because of the noise, traffic, congestion and all the quality-of-life issues that happen when you have the density of a hotel and people coming in and out of a large building.”

At the start of the year, Healdsburg had 387 hotel rooms, including 142 in its downtown, according to the city. It now stands at nearly 550 rooms throughout the city after the completion of a few projects, with several more having already received the council’s endorsement to eventually increase to more than 850 rooms in the next few years.

After the recent spate of projects began to uproot local businesses downtown, and a community survey showed negative sentiments about more hotel growth, council members began to give the cap idea more attention. The majority of the council agreed it was a necessary step.

“The concern that we’re really addressing is a boom in hotel development that we feel is happening too rapidly,” Councilwoman Leah Gold said earlier this month. “We really don’t want to see major developments, especially downtown, until we’ve absorbed the impacts of the ones that we already have.”

Hotel projects submitting applications that planning staff have labeled as complete before the ordinance takes effect in mid-January are exempt from the new rules. Owners of the Duchamp Hotel downtown, which operates six guest rooms, has already proposed adding a second floor, which would expand its number of rooms to 20 and increase an existing parking lot from 15 to 24 spaces.

City staff recommended the ordinance to the City Council, noting that the developers can always approach the city with an agreement to negotiate a project beyond the scope allowed by the new policy.

The city would then have a chance to review the public benefits and other perks, such as workforce housing or fees toward parks, the builder might offer for such a project.

“In the end, I think Healdsburg has a real love-hate relationship with tourists,” Councilman Joe Naujokas said at the council meeting earlier this month. “Ultimately, my objective here is to encourage more love and limit the hate. And I think (this) does a fairly decent job of mitigating the hate side of things by saying, ‘Look, we’re going to limit the rooms.’?”

Mayor Brigette Mansell favored the ordinance, but rejected Naujokas’ characterization of the city. The two came together to join Gold, who was unanimously voted Healdsburg’s next vice mayor on Monday, and Councilman Shaun McCaffery in voting for the hotel cap.

“I don’t support this because I hate anything,” said Mansell, who completed her four-year term Monday. “It’s because I love my town and I want to see balance, and we’re at a place where we can push a pause button.”