Happy Monday. I’m back!

Hope you didn’t miss me too much :)

Sorry about the little disappearance there. Things got busy, I was doing a bit of traveling, and I am going to try to ease my way back into this.

For those of you who are new here, welcome!

This is the Napa Lowdown, back from what turned into a pretty decent sabbatical.

If you are new, Monday Town Notes is where we usually catch up on some of the civic things happening around Napa. City projects, local changes, new businesses, infrastructure, things that might actually affect you, and generally the stuff you may not hear about unless you are paying pretty close attention.

Then we typically have a Friday edition that is more about what is happening around town that weekend and what might actually be worth checking out.

Sorry again for the little break.

I occasionally have to remind people that this is not actually my job, but I really do love keeping up with all the things going on around town.

And to be honest, I was traveling for a decent chunk of the last few weeks, and it always feels a little disingenuous trying to report on Napa when I am not even in Napa.

But I’m back.

We are going to start easy and work our way back into it.

And of course, everyone’s favorite.

Let’s start with trivia:

Approximately how far is Napa from the nearest existing passenger rail station?

A) 8 miles
B) 12 miles
C) 20 miles
D) 35 miles

Alright, this one definitely caught my attention.

We are still a very, very long way from hopping on a train in Napa and riding it into the Bay Area, but this just got a little less hypothetical.

The Napa Valley Transportation Authority officially kicked off the planning process this month for a potential passenger rail station somewhere in South Napa County.

And we are not talking about some vague “maybe trains would be nice someday” study anymore.

They are actually starting to look at where a station could go.

The study area includes American Canyon, the Airport Industrial Area and nearby parts of unincorporated south Napa County, and NVTA received a $250,000 Caltrans grant to eventually identify a preferred location and figure out how it could connect into the broader regional rail network.

Realistically, we are still a long way away from any of this becoming something we can actually use.

Right now, all we really have when it comes to trains in Napa is the Wine Train, which obviously is not getting anyone to work in San Francisco.

But imagine eventually being able to pull a passenger train all the way into Napa, maybe even connecting somewhere around the transit center, and actually having another realistic way to commute into the city.

That would be a pretty incredible addition.

I know plenty of us have suffered through that drive at one point or another, and having any alternative besides sitting in traffic would be pretty nice.

To be clear, that is not what is being proposed right now. The current study is focused on South Napa County, and this is all still very early.

But there is a pretty meaningful difference between asking whether passenger rail in Napa could ever make sense and actually starting to figure out where you would put the station.

So I would not sell your car just yet.

But this is officially something I am going to keep an eye on.

We have actually been tracking this one pretty closely for a while, but if you haven’t, let me bring you up to speed really quickly.

But this month, that part started to feel a lot more real.

City Council approved roughly another $404,000 to bring in a dedicated project-management firm to help move the whole thing through planning and design, and the City is now pretty explicitly describing the goal as delivering Napa’s first aquatics and recreation campus.

Exactly what gets built is still being worked out, but the possibilities include an aquatic center, sports fields, courts, indoor recreation space and other community amenities.

This is one of those things that has been talked about in Napa forever, and now there is actually a property, real money behind it and a team being paid to turn it into an actual plan.

I think this would be a great addition.

For a city our size, it has always felt a little strange that we do not have a real public aquatic center, especially with how hot it gets here for a pretty decent chunk of the year.

Shoutout to In-Shape and HealthQuest, which obviously have pools, but I have also heard those can get pretty packed.

Realistically, though, we are still a ways away from anyone jumping in the water.

The City expects to show the first two design options in early 2027, spend the rest of that year refining them, and hopefully have a phased design approved by the end of 2027. Only after that would it move into full construction documents.

So no opening date yet.

If you have ever thought about legally renting out a room in your house to visitors, the City of Napa is currently accepting applications for new hosted vacation-rental permits.

But you do not have much time.

The application window closes this Thursday, October 15 at 5 p.m.

And there is an important distinction here: This is not for buying a house in Napa and turning the whole thing into an Airbnb.

A hosted vacation rental means you actually live in the house, you are still sleeping there while guests are staying, and you can rent out no more than two bedrooms.

The City only allows 60 of these hosted permits total, and if there are more qualified applications than available permits, they will be handled through a lottery.

For comparison, Napa also allows 41 non-hosted vacation rentals, basically the whole-house version, and every one of those permits is currently taken. Even that waitlist is full.

So if you have ever kicked around the idea of making a little extra money off a spare room, this is one of those random City deadlines that would be very easy to completely miss.

And apparently Napa gives you exactly two weeks to figure out whether becoming a very small hotelier is for you.

Applications close Thursday.

And the answer to this week’s trivia is 20 miles.

The nearest existing passenger rail station is in Suisun-Fairfield, which is roughly 20 miles from Napa.

So yeah, when I say we are a little cut off from the rest of the Bay Area transit-wise, I am not completely making that up.

Anyway, that is all I have for you today.

It feels good to be back.

I am going to ease back into the normal rhythm here, but as always, if you see something interesting happening around town, send it my way.

New business, weird city project, something changing in your neighborhood, a rumor you want me to look into, whatever.

A lot of the best stuff in here starts with one of you sending me something I completely missed.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you Friday.

Callie.