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HEALDSBURG KIDS SWEEP STATEWIDE CONTEST FOR VOCATIONAL SKILLS
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
April 11, 2024 Date, Date, 20202020
FIVE LOCAL STUDENTS HEAD TO ‘SKILLSUSA’ NATIONALS THIS SUMMER By Simone Wilson
Photo courtesy of Brigette Mansell
A growing movement at Healdsburg High School to expand vocational education paid off last weekend in SoCal, where six HHS students medaled in the annual statewide Skills-USA competition. Competing against regional winners from across California, local students took home gold in three categories: “culinary arts,” “baking and pastry” and “engineering technology and design.” They’ll now go on to represent California in the SkillsUSA national championships, scheduled for June in Atlanta. The winning design for the engineering category: A phone battery powered by algae that students harvested from the Russian River. Kids like these “are going to be the ones solving the big problems in the world, going forward,” says Derek Corsino, who oversees SkillsUSA training at the high school. Corsino, a pastry chef who once competed on a Food Network baking show, also leads the elite culinary program at HHS. He says 24 students from Healdsburg competed in more than 10 events at the state contest this year. Compare that to 17 students competing in seven events last year—and the year before that, Healdsburg’s first year at SkillsUSA, 14 students in five events, according to Corsino. “It’s amazing,” he says. “We’ve come so far.” At nationals in Atlanta,
MARCH ON MARCH A group of local subject-matter experts took an informal survey of March Avenue in late February, scouting out opportunities to plant trees. The project is being spearheaded by former Healdsburg mayor and community organizer Brigette Mansell. Pictured from left: former city planning commissioner Dan Petrik, climate activist Tyra Benoit, former city arborist Matt Thompson, current city parks official Jaime Licea, Brigette Mansell and native plant expert Martha Hunt.
Imagine Hundreds More Native Trees Lining the Streets of Healdsburg THAT’S THE GOAL OF A NEW CITIZEN PLAN, STARTING WITH MARCH AVENUE By Simone Wilson
A new, citizen-led initiative in Healdsburg will attempt to plant 500 more trees along city streets—an ambitious endeavor that will involve raising funds, rallying community members to help, mapping spots to plant, getting local landowners on board, dodging underground utility lines, caring for the trees longterm and much more. The goal is to plant 50 trees along March Avenue by November 2025—a pilot program that would
serve as a model for tackling other city streets that “lack shade and are uncomfortably hot during much of the year.” Planting is scheduled to begin this fall along March Avenue, our “neglected east-west corridor,” organizers say. The group behind this big green dream, “Street Trees for Healdsburg,” is a subset of the larger Climate Action Healdsburg group, which has grown over the past few years into a busy hive of around 30 locals who put their energies and expertise toward environmental problemsolving here in town. One of Healdsburg’s more progressive former mayors and a current substitute teacher in town, Brigette Mansell, sits at
the helm of the street-tree project. The roster of folks she’s recruited to help advise at this early stage is a who’swho of local experts in urban planning and environment—including former city planning commissioner Dan Petrik; climate educator Tyra Benoit; former city arborist Matt Thompson; current city parks official Jaime Licea; Healdsburg High School art teacher Linus Lancaster, who’s been planting on campus with help from students; and perhaps Healdsburg’s most famous gardener, Martha Hunt, a native-plant guru by all accounts. Their group motto? “Stitching community together, one tree at a time.”
The dream is twofold: Improve quality of life in Healdsburg—uniting the town with shadier, more walkable streets—while helping restore balance to the planet. And it all begins on March Avenue. “That’s not a tourist street, unless they’re going to the hospital,” Mansell says. “It’s the most forgotten street in town.” Team member Matt Thompson, who worked for decades as the city’s arborist, says that “from the whole greenhouse gas perspective, planting trees is like the lowhanging fruit. It’s the easy, fairly inexpensive way to mitigate some of these problems.” He adds: “There’s something called ‘urban heat
islands’ that are created when you put in sidewalks and parking lots and pathways. The trees help to cool that reflective surface.” While the tree project doesn’t require city permission, because all the planting will happen on private land, Mansell says she’s been grateful to have the support of city officials so far. “My understanding is that the trees would be on private property, so the City doesn’t have a formal role in the process right now,” Healdsburg City Manager Jeff Kay says via email. “But we’re definitely supportive of efforts to add trees in this area. I know that our staff has been in contact with this group and has ➝ Hundreds of Trees, 6
➝ Skills Contest, 6
FOLEY CLOSES CHALKBOARD, PLANS NEW RESTAURANT WITH ‘LATIN CUISINE’ ONE DECADE AFTER CHALKBOARD REPLACED CYRUS INSIDE HOTEL LES MARS By Simone Wilson Photo by Simone Wilson
TURNOVER The ground floor of Hotel Les Mars is
restaurant-less for now.
Chalkboard, the high-end Healdsburg restaurant on the ground floor of Hotel Les Mars at 27 North St., closed abruptly late last month. Under the hotel’s signature striped awnings, its street-facing
windows are now covered in brown paper. Both the hotel and restaurant space are owned by businessman Bill Foley. His other local food, wine and hospitality holdings include multiple Healdsburg-area wineries and tasting rooms, the new Goodnight’s steakhouse on the Healdsburg plaza and the Farmhouse Inn and restaurant in Forestville. A former Chalkboard employee who wished to remain anonymous told the Tribune that the staff was informed their restaurant would close just a week before the shutdown and that the whole experience was rather sudden and jarring. The employee said some former Chalkboard colleagues now have the option to work a few blocks away at Goodnight’s. According to the Hotel Les Mars website, the “final day of service” at
Chalkboard was Sunday, March 24. The site also says that a “new and exciting restaurant concept” called Arandas will be coming to the hotel in “early summer” this year. James Blystone, a spokesperson for Foley’s Glacier Restaurant Group, confirmed over email that “Chalkboard will be changing, and the restaurant will end up being Latin cuisine and will open in summer 2024.” The spokesperson said more details will be coming soon. Rumors among insiders—fanned by Foley’s recent announcement that he’s going into the tequila business—speculate that the new restaurant will likely serve upscale Mexican food. Chalkboard replaced Michelin-starred restaurant Cyrus as the Hotel Les Mars eatery in 2013.