They Refused To Tear It Down: The Long, Exhausting Road To A Ribbon Cutting In Healdsburg

HEALDSBURG, CA — After decades of debate and design, the Foley Family Community Pavilion on North Street is finally complete.

"It's beautiful," said Kyle Stevens, one of about 200 people at Monday's ribbon-cutting.

Big enough to fit 8,000 people, the open-air pavilion will shelter the Healdsburg Farmers Market, concerts, dances, and other public events under a canopy, transferring some of the load off of the town square's plaza.

The plaza is great, but this is a bigger area, Stevens said. “They did a great job."

The ribbon-cutting Monday marked decades of decisions, hundreds of hours of arguing, dozens of blueprints, and $10.5 million that went into the open-air pavilion next to Foss Creek and The Little Saint, where the 1922 Cerri building once stood.

The pavilion is a far cry from the parking lot that would have replaced the building, a one-time grocery store and distribution warehouse where horse-drawn wagons, and then trucks, filled with apples, stone fruit, and grapes once pulled up.

The Cerri building was saved from demolition by people who insisted the eyesore deserved rehabilitation and preservation, and who didn't want to be left with nothing but photographs and regrets after knocking it down. The hard part was deciding what to do with it and how to do it.

Monday's opening still evoked equal parts pride and battle fatigue.

"There's so much to be proud of," said Mitchell Price, the project captain at TLCD Architecture responsible for turning the 12,000-square-foot, rectangular building into a pavilion. But the project was "not always easy to love," he said from the stage. Balancing the old and new, competing visions, and modern requirements was a "complex puzzle," he said. "It's a miracle that a period in the town's history was preserved as much as it was."

The miracle is credited to Courtney Foley, who, with her sister Carol, convinced their father Bill Foley to donate the funds necessary to pay for the pavilion's transformation.

Generations watched the facade age little by little as the building settled into the earth, corroded metal siding rusted, and the Cerri building became an embarrassment to decision-makers trying to recast Healdsburg into a wine country destination.

The new building's design evokes the Cerri building and a version of Healdsburg before the downtown was occupied by tony boutiques, destination restaurants, second homes, and a fair share of Ferraris. The pavilion has open sides and a partially translucent roof. The existing opaque front façade was replaced with a metal fabric that recalls the original. There are touches of corrugated metal made from 21st-century materials.

City Councilman Chris Herrod said the project was already 10 years in the making when he first joined the Healdsburg Parks and Recreation Commission. "And boom, here we are." He said the $7.5 million investment from the Foley Family Charitable Foundation made the challenge possible to pursue. "There is a lot more of the Cheri building than there would be without them," he added.

"We're so happy the signs are in English and Spanish," said Elizabeth Perez and Sandra Yobal, referring to the illustrated timeline of Healdsburg's past and the Foley Pavilion in front of them.

They were there as part of Vamos North Bay, a Healdsburg non-profit that will bring the Tianguis y Bazar night market for novice and first-time entrepreneurs to the Pavilion every third Saturday, along with food, music, and dancing, according to Perez and Yobal.

The city council has been discussing for months what to do with the space, which is supposed draw people to businesses not clustered around the plaza. The town green would host a handful of "signature events," meaning they are authorized by the city council — Merry Healdsburg, Dia de Muertos, the Fourth of July Celebration, Tuesdays in the Plaza, and Sundays in the Plaza.

The pavilion would become a "premier location," foremost for the Healdsburg Farmers Market, which has been squeezing into the parking lot on the opposite side of North Street on Saturdays and the plaza on Tuesdays. All other events have to be scheduled around it. City administrators are currently developing a system to coordinate scheduling and avoid conflicts. Meanwhile, farmers' market organizers were unhappy about moving off the plaza on Tuesdays.

The next stage will bring a public art installation to the new pavilion, marking another chapter in its transformation. The Arts and Culture Commission is set to make its final recommendation to the City Council in late January.