Inside this Napa Valley city’s long search for a downtown

Leaders in American Canyon, a city now divided by a highway and in search of a downtown, are pinning those hopes on plans to develop a center of the city on a multi-hundred-million-dollar project of shops, a hotel, restaurants, and entertainment venues, as well as housing on 309 acres, part of which once was a cement plant.

The Watson Ranch Specific Plan is being developed by American Canyon I, LLC, owned and managed by Terrence McGrath, CEO of Oakland-based McGrath Properties, and John Jaeger, representing the Newell family, which owns 57 acres of the total 309-acre plan area. McGrath estimates the total value of land, infrastructure improvements, commercial buildings, and lot preparation, excluding vertical residential construction, will be in the $500 million range at full build-out.

Development of the Napa Valley Ruins and Gardens (NVR&G) at the former Standard Portland Cement Company plant would include retail shops, a hotel, restaurants, an amphitheater, wedding and entertainment venues, a microbrewery, a distillery, and public gathering places just east of Highway 29 and the Napa Junction Shopping Center.

City officials also envision multiple parks and bike and pedestrian trails connecting Watson Ranch and surrounding neighborhoods to the Newell Open Space, the Napa Valley Vine Trail and the River to Ridge Trail.

The development is named for Augustus Watson, who discovered limestone and clay deposits beneath the property around 1900 and formed the Napa Junction Company to quarry and ship the minerals to an Oakland cement plant. Watson sold the operation to Standard Portland Cement in 1902.

According to the city’s general plan, the NVR&G will “Provide for the development of a Town Center that physically and functionally serves as the symbolic and identifiable focus of community activities and events for the City of American Canyon and which is a regional destination within Napa Valley.”

Challenge: Give Napa Valley travelers a reason to stop

At the southern edge of Napa County, American Canyon has grown from 7,000 residents in 1992 to 22,000 today. However, for travelers heading north to the Napa Valley, the city’s growth over the past three decades has remained largely invisible, except for the municipal buildings and retail shopping centers fronting Highway 29.

Hope for a way to change that is pinned on the ruins of the Standard Portland Cement Company plant. Much like a medieval monastery, with long rows of Roman-arched window openings in the low walls of old cement processing buildings, it was constructed in 1903 in the small rural community known as Napa Junction, named for the junction of the Southern Pacific Railroad branch lines to Vallejo and Benicia, according to the Stone Quarries and Beyond website.

After opening, Standard Portland’s Napa Junction plant used the minerals to manufacture and supply much of the cement needed to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Standard Portland’s cement operation closed down in 1935, but the cement plant was later run by Santa Cruz Portland Cement Co. The Basalt Rock Co. erected more buildings on the site, including the three silos and the rotunda, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and produced light weight aggregate for concrete used in high-rise buildings, until 1978 when the plant was abandoned.

In 1984, Jaeger Vineyards bought the property and attempted to convert the land to vineyards but determined the soil conditions were not suitable for grape cultivation.

Watson Ranch Specific Plan

The specific plan calls for construction of 1,253 dwelling units, 23 acres of parks, an additional 30 acres of parkland, and a 200-room boutique hotel on the acreage surrounding up to 176,000 square feet of retail and commercial use and 58,000 square feet of ancillary commercial use in the NVR&G Town Center.

Following a groundbreaking ceremony in July 2021, work has included extending utilities to the site from Highway 29, which required temporarily lifting the UPRR rails and ties to excavate a utility trench crossing beneath the rail right of way. Site grading for the future streets and building sites occurred between September 2021 and February 2022. Installation of curbs, gutters, sidewalks, utilities and street paving progressed rapidly throughout all of 2022.

McGrath recently told the Business Journal that the developer has spent $55 million to date on infrastructure improvements to serve the first phases, comprised of 317 single-family dwellings and 186 apartments.

Projects: Artisan and Harvest at Watson Ranch

Housing for the project includes a 98-unit single family neighborhood called Artisan at Watson Ranch by D.R. Horton. In January, the builder completed two model homes and opened a sales office at 8 Singer Street, with access by way of Rolling Hills Drive in Vintage Ranch.

Several homes have been sold, and another 30 or so homes are in various stages of construction on lots ranging from 3,150 to 6,500 square feet. The Artisan homes will feature Ranch, Traditional and Farmhouse exteriors, 3 to 4 bedrooms, and floor areas of 1,700 to 2,300 square feet. Homes are priced beginning at $751,000, according to D.R. Horton’s website.

D.R. Horton is also building single family homes in a 219-lot phase of Watson Ranch located on Lot 10, across Marcus Road from the Lemos Pointe Apartments and north of the Rio Del Mar extension. The Harvest neighborhood will feature three- to four-bedroom homes, with floor areas of 1,583 to 2,824 square feet on lots ranging from 3,198 to 6,724 square feet. The first 32 homes are under construction along Marcus Road, and building pads, underground utility service lines and lot line fence foundations have been installed on many more lots.

McGrath told the Journal that, as of the last week of March, a combined total of 20 homes have been sold and 75 homes are finished or under construction in the Artisan and Harvest phases.

Project: Lemos Pointe at Watson Ranch modular affordable apartments

Affordable apartments, named Lemos Pointe at Watson Ranch in honor of longtime American Canyon resident and community advocate Fran Lemos, are being developed by The Pacific Companies of Boise, Idaho. It teamed with Autovol Volumetric Modular and Prefab Logic for design and offsite construction of the modular apartments. The developer’s website states the project is “designed to bring housing to a mix of incomes who might otherwise be priced out of the area.”

Autovol’s website states that Lemos Pointe is one of the first projects to be built with a highly automated modular factory approach. Autovol and Prefab Logic, both also based near Boise, codeveloped the data and code for this new modular construction advancement. Autovol has found that the new automated modular approach helps speed up construction even more while taking most of the heavy lifting off of people and putting it onto robots.

Lemos Pointe is to have 19 units affordable for those families making only $25,500 per year, or 30% of Napa County’s median income, which is $85,000 per year for a family of four. Twenty-eight units will be reserved for residents with 40%, 75 units for those with 50%, and 62 units for those with 60% of the county’s median income, plus two manager’s units.

Floor areas will range from 400-square-foot studio apartments to 1,050-square-foot three-bedroom apartments. The city approval confirms that the 184 affordable units will satisfy Watson Ranch’s total obligation for affordable housing as required by the Development Agreement.

The project will include eight, three-story buildings, as well as a turf area, dog park, picnic area, tot lot, basketball half-court, and 301 parking spaces. The modules have all been stacked in place, and the buildings have taken shape, clad in insulating panels, with exterior finishes, interior utility connections, and site amenities now underway. The first occupants are scheduled to move in during July.

Project: Boutique hotel at the cement plant ruins

On Jan. 26, the city Planning Commission unanimously approved a design permit for a new three-story hotel and 30 residences on lots 16 and 17 in Watson Ranch. The hotel will consist of 200 rooms, two swimming pools, and several multifunctional rooms. The two-story residences will consist of 18 flats and 12 townhomes that range from 2,065 to 2,695 square feet.

The development site is immediately east of the NVR&G on the south side of the Rio Del Mar extension. The city’s staff report indicates that the exterior architecture will be a modern industrial design, with stone and metals that reflect the former industrial buildings at the NVR&G.

McGrath, testifying on behalf of American Canyon I, LLC, described the developer’s decision to locate the hotel at the site’s northwest corner fronting on the traffic circle intersection at Rio Del Mar East and Rolling Hills Drive, saying this location will give hotel visitors ready pedestrian access to all of the activities at the NVR&G.

He recently told the Business Journal that construction of the hotel is scheduled to start in early 2024.

Legal disputes over schools and water

The project has already spurred legal disputes with the city of Vallejo contending it does not intend to supply Watson Ranch under a 1993 agreement with the Jaeger Family granting the city the right to lay pipes across the land in exchange for water and future water purchases to serve any development there.

Citing drought and doubts about future supply, the city stated in February 2022 it will serve only enough water for the vineyards. Lawsuits have been filed by the developer and American Canyon against Vallejo.

The dispute briefly held up the approval of the 2.4 million-square-foot Giovannoni Logistics Center project on Green Valley Road. The City Council later certified it had enough to serve that project without the Vallejo supply. American Canyon previously issued a will-serve letter to American Canyon I LLC, committing to provide potable water sufficient for the full build-out of all phases of Watson Ranch.

Schools for the homes in the project have also triggered legal disputes. A 2016 agreement between Napa Valley Unified School District provided the district would build schools to serve the homes in exchange for payment of developer fees. In 2021, it backed off that plan, citing declining enrollment. The district continues to demand payment of developer fees and the city continues to issue project building permits, citing the previous agreement.

McGrath’s vision for the NVR&G Town Center at Watson Ranch is for it to become a regional music, food & beverage, visual arts, and recreational destination that will encourage wine country visitors to extend their stays in American Canyon, convince tour and convention planners to include NVR&G events as part of their offerings, and attract concert fans from throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

At the Jan. 26 hearing approving the hotel, Lemos said of the proposed American Canyon town center, “It’s been a long time coming. It’s something that’s going to make our city so proud and so popular. It’s going to make everything come true that we planned for when we incorporated.”

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Correction, April 28, 2023: 330 Land Company LLC is the applicant for the project Promontory at Watson Ranch.