Page 70 - Healdsburg, CA Citywide Design Guidelines

Character Area 7: Healdsburg North

Corridor
Character Area 7 extends from the north section of Character
Area 6 along Healdsburg Avenue. The majority of the Character
Area captures the east and west sides of Healdsburg Avenue from
Powell Avenue to Chiquita Street, with the area also extending
west along Dry Creek Road to Highway 101. The extent of this
Character Area encompasses one of the primary gateways into
the City (shown with a white border on the map on page 63), Dry
Creek Road, and also includes a key corridor to Downtown.

Development in Character Area 7 currently combines a variety
of building types and uses including offices, hotels, restaurants,
industrial and other services, as well as low-scale multi-family
development at the southern end. The majority of the existing
development is set back from the street and arranged in a strip-
mall fashion, placing surface parking lots between the public
realm and the buildings. Existing buildings in this area often lack
significant architectural character, style and detail, making them
less notable and unique. While sidewalks are present throughout
the majority of this Character Area, the lack of landscape buffer
KEY DESIGN between the sidewalk and street, the large blocks and wide roads
OBJECTIVES FOR make this area less pedestrian-friendly.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
This area serves as a transition from the vineyards to the west
• Transform the current character
to extend the Downtown “feel” along Dry Creek Road. As such, building and landscape designs
northward that incorporate some of the features of more rural contexts are
• Locate a building to be
moderately set back from the appropriate.
street, but close enough to create
a building presence and street wall
• Orient a building toward
Healdsburg Avenue and/or Dry
Creek Road
• Provide pedestrian connections
from a building’s entry to
Healdsburg Avenue
• Articulate buildings to reduce the
perceived mass and create human
scaled modules
• Provide vehicular access from
secondary streets
• Discourage surface parking
adjacent to Dry Creek Road and
Healdsburg Avenue
• More flexibility in building
placement is provided north of Dry
Creek Road
• Establish a sense of entry and
transition from rural to urban along
Dry Creek Road through varied
placement of buildings; street
edge landscaping that draws upon
the rural vineyard character and
natural building materials such as
wood, stucco and stone

62 Healdsburg Citywide Design Guidelines