Neighbors of the Napa Valley Expo have for more than a decade known the drill for late May – road closures, detours and hours of live music emanating from the fairground next door.
This year, however, BottleRock Napa Valley's organizers plan to bring not one weekend of concerts to the city of Napa's Oxbow neighborhood, but two.
At a town hall meeting Tuesday evening, BottleRock's producers discussed how their second music showcase, Festival La Onda, will deal with road and parking issues. La Onda, a new festival showcasing Spanish-language rock and pop, will take place on the first weekend of June, a week after BottleRock takes over the Expo on Memorial Day weekend.
Justin Dragoo, one of Latitude 38 Entertainment's three principals, led the forum and broke down plans during both weekends for those living closest to the Expo, which will host both festivals.
BottleRock's 11th edition will take place from Friday to Sunday, May 24-26, with La Onda scheduled for June 1-2. For La Onda, Latitude 38 will partner with regional Latin restaurants and is seeking to collaborate with Latino-owned winemakers for the event.
“It’s designed to be a community event for the Latin community not only in Napa but Northern California,” Dragoo said.
Neighbors won’t have to worry about stage construction the week between festivals – La Onda will use the same stage setup as BottleRock. That means that the dismantling of stages will only happen once, during the week of June 3-10.
“While it is another festival, the build process and noise around that, (the) construction side of things, is designed to happen once,” Dragoo told the Expo audience.
Concerts are slated to begin at noon during BottleRock and 11:30 a.m. for La Onda, and will conclude at 10 p.m. for both festivals. Sound checks will take place the day before each event.
Dragoo said both BottleRock and La Onda will have the same level of security and staffing, although La Onda's daily attendance is predicted to be 30,000, compared to BottleRock’s 40,000 in recent years.
Members of the California Highway Patrol, Napa Police and Latitude 38 that the main updates to festival operations this year will affect street closures, parking passes for residents of the Juarez and Fairview neighborhood, and rideshare pickup.
CHP Sgt. William (Brad) Bradshaw explained that access to Fairview and Hennessy drives from Silverado Trail will be closed off to festivalgoers with barricades, signage and CHP patrols. “We’re trying to limit you folks from getting disrupted as much as you have in the past,” he told audience members.
Three-by-four-foot signs will read “Resident Access Only,” and officers will check ID to make sure residents live in the neighborhood or ask residents to verify their guests.
Officers will set up soft closures – areas supervised by security and labeled with signage – along Coombsville Road at Davis Avenue, Hennessey Drive and Linnell and Hoffman avenues.
“We don’t want to make this worse," said Dragoo of Latitude 38. "How do we just generally create a deterrent to protect your neighborhood in a new way that hasn’t been done?”
Third Street, which runs directly north of the Expo, will be under controlled access, with a pass required to enter the street as well as different passes to enter the Juarez and Fairview neighborhoods from Third. No curbside parking will be allowed on Third Street, and the same rules will apply for both the BottleRock and La Onda weekends.
While most Expo neighbors seemed content with Tuesday's presentation, one, Maureen Healy, expressed worry over the possibility of residents selling parking spaces to festivalgoers, a practice she alleges has happened before.
“Is that what Napa wants to be known for? Selling public parking spots?” Healy said.
In response to tourists sneaking into the neighborhood, Dragoo said Latitude 38 is making an effort to keep out unwanted vehicles but there’s only so much that can be done.
“We’re trying to listen to feedback and work with the city and CHP to make this event better for as many people as we can,” he responded.
Rideshare pickup and drop-off will also look a little different this year at both festivals. In years past, drop-offs were designed to go through downtown Napa to keep them out of neighborhoods. Now pickups also must take place at the designated drop-off lot at the corner of Third and Randolph streets.
Noise control will be the same as it has been in the past for the festivals, meaning that BottleRock and La Onda will comply with Expo policy.
Trash mitigation will also be handled by the ZeroHero company, with neighborhood cleaning both during and after the festival weekends.
Responding to neighbors who asked about limiting hot dog vendors outside of festival grounds, organizers said there isn’t much they can do about them this year.
“We would appreciate a push from the (county) health department,” Dragoo said.