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CITY’S NEW ACTIVE TRANSPORT PLAN CHARTS GREENER PATH FORWARD
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
January 30, 2025 Date, Date, 20202020
EAST-WEST ROUTES IN HEALDSBURG’S FUTURE AS PUBLIC WORKS MAKES ADJUSTMENTS By Christian Kallen
Why a Plan?
That’s where the Healdsburg ATP comes in. As an official City Plan, it is a document that Healdsburg can use to guide implementation of local projects and policies, solicit grants and other funding, and keep the goals of a greener Healdsburg at top of mind. “It guides the public and private investment,” Zimmer said. “It is a reference document that we use regularly… To know what the community wanted, what the council approved, what our stakeholders have said to us in the past.” ➝ Transport Plan, 7
Photo by Rick Tang
Healdsburg last week added an Active Transportation Plan (ATP) to its library of planning documents that outline future projects and growth in the city, after more than a year’s study, conversation and preparation. The final plan ATP was presented by Public Works Director Larry Zimmer and Senior Project Manager Michael Harrigan to the City Council last week, and after some edifying discussion it was unanimously adopted. Although the ATP was developed as a component of Sonoma County’s own 2025 Countywide ATP, the city’s ATP’s sharpest focus is on improving connections within the city that prioritize bicycle and pedestrian travel over an automotive solution.
FRIENDS AND FAMILY Familiar faces including Susan and Steve Vargas, front, filled the bleachers at Esquivel Hall for the ribbon-cutting on Jan. 24. Behind
them sit, from left, Elaine and Lew Sbrana, Wayne and Pauline Rogers, Andrew Rogers, Doug Pile and more than 200 others.
Gym, Theater Dedicated to Drew Esquivel 2013 GRAD HONORED AS REMODELED HALL PUT TO GOOD USE By Christian Kallen
Perhaps for the first time in its young life, the new Drew Esquivel Hall on the Healdsburg High School campus boasted a bleacher full of fans—wrestling fans, drama fans, fans of the school district and of Drew Esquivel himself— all come to recognize the dedication of the transformed indoor gym. The walls were clean and white, the lighting inspired and bright, the tiered bleachers steep enough to offer line-of-sight to 224 fans and friends of family. All were there last Friday to take part in the ceremonies, meet new friends and reconnect with old ones, and enjoy cookies and other treats from the school’s culinary program. Though the remodel of the former Frost Hall was
night, Jan. 24, as a series of speakers, planned and spontaneous, took the mic and told their stories of Drew Esquivel. They all reinforced the wording on the new plaque outside the gym, with Esquivel’s likeness and the phrase, “What most distinguished him was how he genuinely made everyone around him better through compassion, kindness and joy.” Among those who spoke in the brief Friday evening program was Brent Morganson, a former drama teacher who bemoaned the absence of coverage of Esquivel’s high school career as a thespian. “Drew didn’t care what part he had, he gave each role 100%,” he said later. “Drew was a pirate in Pirates, a lead in The History Boys, and a lead in Hairspray, just to name a few.”
begun in 2017, said HUSD Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel, “There was never a question that it would be named” for Drew Esquivel, as approved by the school board last November. Wrestler, swimmer, actor and valedictorian, young Esquivel left an impact on the kids he went to school with, played sports with and walked with as a fellow student. To say that Esquivel, who graduated in 2013 and died three years later at the hands of a drunk driver, left an impact on his fellow students, his teachers and his school, would simply be stating the obvious. The full house at the new hall, and open smiles and occasional tears of those who knew him, said it all. “We are here because of loss,” said Vanden Heuvel, whose own brother died just a month ago. “I’ve learned the best way to keep a loved one alive is to hold on to the good memories.” That was the formula followed last Friday
Esquivel Hall
Wrestling coach Scott Weidemier did double-duty not only by extolling Drew’s time in Healdsburg as an all-league wrestler, but
ITALIAN LEGACY OF MUGNAINI WOOD-FIRE OVENS HEALDSBURG FACTORY SELLS ‘PIZZA OVENS’ BUILT OLD WORLD-STYLE By Christian Kallen
Photo by Rick Tang
PIZZAMAN Jason Clay itemizes the advantages of a wood-fire
oven, such as those manufactured at Mugnaini in Healdsburg.
The recent North Bay Pizza promotion called attention to many local pizzerias, from Geyserville south to Marin County. But it doesn’t take a promotion to get people to take a slice: According to Food & Wine magazine, Americans eat pizza three
by inaugurating the gym as a home (at last) for the school’s wrestling program. Weidemier said he would always think of the new gym as Esquivel Hall, “to honor what his parents did after his passing,” in embracing the idea of a Drew Esquivel “Live Like Drew” Scholarship. When it was their turn for his parents to speak, Susanne and Andy Esquivel briefly but eloquently expressed their love and appreciation of everyone who was there to remember and honor Drew. “Thank you for all of your support—thank you for golfing and thank you for trotting!” Susanne Esquivel said, to laughter. She pointed out that the town’s Rotary Sunrise Club came up with the idea of the Live Like Drew Scholarship Fund, to provide college assistance for HHS students who deserve it and need it, to continue his legacy of positively impacting the lives of HHS students. Live Like Drew funds are raised primarily at a yearly
golfing tournament at Tayman Park in September, and the annual Turkey Trot downtown. Andy Esquivel gave special props to Healdsburg Running Company for inviting the Drew Esquivel Fund to be part of “the healthiest, happiest, shortest event in town”— the annual 5k fun run on Thanksgiving Day. Andy Esquivel’s voice briefly cracked as he summarized that the scholarship fund “began with a family, but it grew to include our entire community, and beyond.” The ribbon cutting was, as they usually are, anticlimactic. But after the ceremony the students and parents were invited “backstage” to see the dressing area for the new small stage facility for the drama program that will also be hosted in Esquivel Hall, while some students frolicked and dog-piled on the new 40-foot cardinal red, black and gray wrestling mat.
times a month, 288 pieces a year and the most popular day to eat pizza is … Super Bowl Sunday, of course. That’s just over a week away. Surprisingly, several local pizzerias have an unspoken bond running between their kitchens. Geyserville’s Diavola, the Matheson restaurant, Journeyman Meat Co., PizZando … even Big John’s Market. (And, behind closed doors, quiet and cold on the back patio of Molti Amici, the former Campo Fina …) The common element is that they all purchased their pizza ovens from Mugnaini, a wood-fire oven manufacturer in Healdsburg. Ah, the romance of Italy 40 years ago. Andrea Mugnaini so fell for the bright flavor of the food and flexibility of the sturdy wood-fire oven, with its high temperatures and durable heat, that in 1989 she set up an arrangement with the Valoriani family of Florence, Italy, to bring
their ovens to America. Their innovation was to make a prefabricated wood-fire oven kit, essentially, of four nesting arcs, with self-supporting domes and other structural innovations to increase stability and simplify the process of assembly. Mugnaini effected an exclusive contract to import the parts, and began building Valoriani ovens in America—using Watsonville as a base. The popularity of the sturdy, attractive, functional Mugnaini ovens grew, and soon they were found in such esteemed kitchens as the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park and Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
➝ 2013 Grad Honored, 4
But – Watsonville?
In 2015 Mugnaini and her husband moved the operation to Healdsburg, had a factory built on Grove Street and staked their ➝ Old World-style, 7