Sixteen years after the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition was formed, the organization that envisioned a 47-mile bike and pedestrian path through the heart of wine country is nearing the homestretch.
Having just opened an 8.2-mile segment of the trail between St. Helena and Calistoga, the coalition is now focused on the last major section yet to be built – 11.2 miles from Yountville to St. Helena.
Coalition members have held four of five “town hall” community meetings this week to share information about the status of the project and answer questions from members of the public.
On Tuesday, coalition founder and board president Chuck McMinn, alongside staff and partners, explained that design work on the Yountville to St. Helena project is 35 percent complete, and entering the "65 percent design phase) on the projected $50 million project.
"That's resulted in a little more progress on the engineering, and we've kicked off our environmental review process," McMinn said.
That process includes completion of an Environmental Impact Report, required under California law when a project may have significant environmental effects. Napa County, which oversees the environmental review, is taking public comment on what the EIR should cover through the end of this month. Once all the studies and review of potential impacts are complete, the county will "circulate" for public review and comment a draft of the EIR, which also include measures the project developers will take to mitigate or off-set those impacts.
The hope, McMinn told the meeting group, is to have the EIR certified by August of 2025. From that point, it will take about two years for the coalition to secure Caltrans approval and right-of-way permits and easements from landowners who properties the trail crosses.
McMinn said he's hopeful that actual construction on the Class I bike path and multimodal trail will begin in early 2027 with completion in 2028 – the group's 20th anniversary.
An initial design has the Yountville to St. Helena segment picking up where the Napa to Yountville segment meets the Madison Street and Highway 29 intersection. There, the path will cross Highway 29 and continue north on the west side of the Napa Valley Wine Train tracks nearly all the way into St. Helena. While the Wine Train tracks cross Highway 29 at Whitehall Lane south of St. Helena, the Vine Trail will remain on the west side of the highway into town.
In addition to the environmental work, the Vine Trail Coalition is working with private landowners along the route to secure voluntary easement agreements for the trail to cross their properties.
So far, said McMinn, 34 of a total 58 landowners have signed letters of support for the project's grant applications.
There are several design alternatives built into the project in case an easement can't be obtained, including options where the trail would run next to Highway 29 instead of west of the train tracks.
The coalition is seeking several grants totaling around $52 million to fund the construction and engineering costs for the project but each grant comes with a 10 percent matching requirement, McMinn said. That matching requirement has already been met, the board president said, with $5 million coming from the Vine Trail Coalition, $5 million from Napa County and $900,000 from the city of St. Helena.
