Tasting Room Tipping Point?

A relatively modest proposal to build a 1,220-square-foot, 45-person tasting room inside an existing warehouse in downtown Healdsburg has ignited a familiar debate among residents about the town’s core character.

This would be the 28th wine-tasting room in Healdsburg, city planning officials said at a heated hearing on the proposal last week. An age-old question lingered in the air: How many tasting rooms is too many for one small town? 

Adding fuel to the debate were community concerns that a current tenant, the 50-year-old Ramos Shoe Repair shop, might be displaced during construction—potentially driving out one of Healdsburg’s oldest and most beloved businesses, a last bastion of simpler times.

“Healdsburg has changed a lot,” current owner Jorge Ramos, whose father Demetrio opened the shop in 1974 and just passed away over summer, told the Tribune this week. “It’s kind of sad, in a way. People with money think they can do whatever they want.”

Ramos said he hasn’t yet heard anything about the proposal from his landlords, who have always been good to him—but if he did have to close his doors due to construction, he said he might consider moving his shop to Windsor, or even retiring early.

Christian Foley-Beining, owner of the Chris Foley Fine Leather shop in the next building over, said of the tasting-room proposal: “We have so many things like this. There are all these boutiques, wineries. Ramos is one of the last places in town where you can get something practical done.”

The plan for 430 Foss St. came before the City of Healdsburg’s Planning Commission on Sept. 24 because owners of the 4,000-square-foot building needed a “conditional use permit” in order to serve alcohol there. Those owners, Healdsburg residents Rod Matteri and his mother Carole Mascherini—who also happen to own Garrett Ace Hardware together—dabble in winemaking on the side, according to their architect, and want a place in town to serve it.

Their application describes a tasting room open from 10am to 7pm daily, with live acoustic music from Thursday through Sunday. “Occasional events are proposed in conjunction with the tasting room and are estimated to be between 15 and 20 events per year,” the application says. “Interior improvements within the building include… a new bar with five seats; a large table with twelve seats; and six smaller tables.”

Overhead, a new second story on the building would house two long-term apartments—an addition that drew kudos from commissioners.

Garrett’s owners Matteri and Mascherini did not respond to a request for comment. They were represented at last week’s city meeting by Healdsburg architect Alan B. Cohen, whose designs can also be seen in the Mill District development rising further south along Healdsburg Avenue and the new Foley Family Community Pavilion going up right across Foss Street from the proposed tasting room.

“The tasting room is allowed, and it makes sense why they want it,” Planning Commissioner Carrie Hunt said at the meeting—but “I’m not over the moon for another tasting room in Healdsburg. I do hope that we find ways to maximize space like this to benefit our community of residents and families and workforce, not just tourists.”

Hunt called the Ramos family “staples in our community” and said “it’s really important that they don’t feel kicked out.”

Still, she and other planning commissioners granted the Garrett’s owners a permit to serve wine at 430 Foss St., mainly on the grounds that city rules allow for one tasting room per “block face.”

The project’s architect, Cohen, explained at the meeting: “The family that owns the property is starting a small sparkling wine company, so they thought it would be ideal to incorporate a tasting room in the building. Obviously that’s not possible on Healdsburg Avenue but since it has frontage on Foss Street, that was an option. It’s a small tasting room, but we think it will work.”

During the public comment period, around a half-dozen Foss Street residents and business owners aired their concerns—some more ideological, but most about the street’s parking problems and cacophony of tangled traffic, which they fear will get worse.

Foss is a unique street in town. A dead-end alley of sorts that runs parallel to Healdsburg Avenue for a single block, it causes all kinds of confusion among drivers looking for parking. It may very well be the only street in Healdsburg that has ever been compared to New York City.

At the tasting-room hearing, Foss Street resident Charlene Schnall challenged planning commissioners to come watch the circus. “You have RVs, you have trucks, you have cars—all day long, backing up,” she said. “And then you have other trucks and other cars turning because they don’t know it’s a dead-end street. It’s a joke. I think before you approve this, you owe it to us, as people that live there, to come look at that street and figure out how to accommodate safety. If you don’t do that, I don’t think you’re doing your job.”

Threads about the tasting-room proposal in the “What’s Happening Healdsburg” and “Beverly Healdsburg” Facebook groups have racked up more than 100 comments since neighbors found out about it. Some locals are throwing around words like “travesty.”

Others argue that another nice indie wine spot might be better than a big gray warehouse. A few city planning commissioners, too, suggested at the hearing that this proposal could be a good thing for the neighborhood.

Cohen, the architect, argued: “Part of the hope is that it will replace what’s really an underutilized space in the downtown to have a warehouse with something that’s more pedestrian-oriented that will hopefully draw people down Foss Street and activate the street a little bit.”

His designs are rather low-key, compared to some of the big developer ideas passing across the desk of the Healdsburg City Planning Commission lately—including major downtown hotels and, indeed, other tasting rooms, like one that Stressed Vines Cellars just opened further south on Healdsburg Avenue, near the roundabout. But with Foss Street’s quirks in the mix and Ramos Shoe Repair on the line, all eyes are on tasting room No. 28 right now.