Supervisors to discuss Inn at the Abbey agreement Tuesday

By Dave Stoneberg

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — John Murphy believes St. Helena’s Lodi Lane is under attack, with two proposed developments that will add substantial traffic to a two-lane rural road.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors will discuss the proposed development at Freemark Abbey on Tuesday, Dec. 5 — Dave Stoneberg Photo

Murphy estimates the traffic from the existing Wine Country Inn & Cottages and two proposed projects, all on Lodi Lane, will total more than 322,000 trips annually. Currently in the works at Napa County are the proposed expansion of production facilities at Duckhorn Vineyards at Silverado Trail and a hotel and resort complex planned for the Freemark Abbey site at Highway 29. Murphy is the co-owner of Lodi Lane’s Sang-Froid Vineyards and founder of “Preserve Lodi Lane.”

The Napa County Board of Supervisors will discuss the proposed development agreement for the planned 79-room hotel to be called Inn at the Abbey, at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 5. A variety of ways exist to attend the meeting, to be held in Suite 305 in the County Administration Building, 1195 Third St., Napa. To view the agenda and how to view the meeting, visit here.

Tuesday’s meeting is the first action on the Freemark Abbey proposal in several years. The owners, the Jackson family, are seeking a major modification of its use permit, and the development agreement includes nine points, including using the six homes on the 15-acre site to be deed-restricted as affordable for employees, along with making an estimated $1.58 million contribution to the county’s affordable-housing trust fund (half upon the issuance of a building permit and half after five years of occupancy).

Plans for Inn at the Abbey include demolishing the long-vacant commercial building on the corner of Lodi Lane and Highway 29 as well as two other buildings — Dave Stoneberg Photo

The proposed project plans are to demolish three buildings, including the long-vacant A Dozen Vintners building on the corner of Lodi Lane and Highway 29 as well as a restaurant and five-room motel. To be built are six new buildings housing a 79-room hotel and associated guest amenities, including a spa with treatment rooms,  fitness studio,  rooftop lounge and back-of-house uses totaling approximately 78,400 square feet, according to the county’s Initial Study checklist. The hotel rooms would be divided among the six buildings on both sides of Lodi Lane. Other site features would include a parking garage, a swimming pool, a plunge pool and an outdoor lawn area.

The use of the historic stone building would be changed as the main level would serve as the hotel’s guest lobby, which might include a hotel lounge and retail uses, according to an August 2019 report from Freemark Abbey. The existing winery uses on the cellar level — barrel and wine bottle storage and wine lab — would become hotel conference spaces.

Currently a draft environmental impact report is in process, and the county has determined the project could have significant effects on the environment in a dozen areas that include air quality and greenhouse-gas emissions; energy, hydrology and water quality; noise, population and housing; transportation/traffic and wildfires.

The county estimates its planning commission might consider the development agreement and the related use permit major modification proposal next spring or summer. The supervisors will act on those proposals in the summer or fall of 2024.

According to the August 2019 Jackson Family Investments request to modify its use permit, the owners of the property have received 20 use permit revisions since the winery was re-established in July 1965. In its long history, the site has had an operating winery, vineyards and tasting room, along with a variety of uses:

-Commercial retail (wine sales, bakeries, antique shops, ice cream shops, candle shop and delicatessens)

-Commercial office

-Commercial catering kitchen

-Party and event space

-Shipping warehouse

-Manufacturing, candle factory

-Brewery and brew-pub restaurant

-Restaurants and cocktail lounges

-Motel

-Art gallery

Freemark Abbey is one of Napa Valley’s original wineries, founded by Josephine Tychson, who was one of the Napa Valley’s first woman winemakers in the late 1880s. Owners Charles Freeman, Mark Foster and Albert “Abbey” Ahern bought the winery in 1940, and parts of their names make up Freemark Abbey. By the mid-1960s, the property was bought again, and a group of business partners re-established winery operations.

Dave Stoneberg is an editor and journalist, who has worked for newspapers in both Lake and Napa counties.