Healdsburg's Newest Park Already Has a Name. It Just Doesn't Have a Shovel Yet.

Drive north out of downtown on Healdsburg Avenue, past the last roundabout at Parkland Farms, and the road opens onto a stretch of rolling oak grassland split by a shallow drainage swale. This is the land where Healdsburg Avenue meets Passalacqua Road, across from the entrance to Montage Healdsburg. Right now it looks like what it is: seasonal wetlands, scattered oaks, a flood detention basin built to hold runoff from Foss Creek. Nothing about it looks like a park.

It is, on paper, one of the largest new public parks in Sonoma County. It has had a name since October 2024. It still doesn't have a confirmed opening date, and the version of it that eventually gets built may look leaner than the version most people have heard described.

The Land Behind the Resort

The site is part of Saggio Hills, the development agreement that also brought the Montage resort and, more recently, 118 units of affordable housing to Healdsburg's north end. As a condition of that agreement, the developer handed the city 38 acres for a public park. Of that, 12 acres are slated to become the actual built park. The other 26 acres are being kept as open reserve, a corridor meant to connect the new park directly into the Healdsburg Ridge Open Space Preserve and Fox Pond just to the southeast.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. When neighbors talk about "the new 38-acre park," they are usually picturing ball fields and a picnic pavilion spread across all of it. In practice, three-quarters of that acreage will stay in something close to its current state: grassland and trail, not turf and infrastructure.

Barbieri Brothers Park, the small 3.5-acre neighborhood park already sitting at Bridle Path and Spur Ridge Lane, is being folded into the larger plan rather than left as a separate stop. Landscape architecture firm Fletcher Studio, which has worked on the site since 2019, has been the one translating that master plan into a buildable design.

The Naming Fight Nobody Expected

Before there was a construction timeline, there was a name, and getting to it took longer than anyone on the council seemed to expect.

The city's Parks and Recreation Commission opened the floor to public nominations in 2023. By the fall of 2024, four names had survived to the council's final vote on October 21: Smith Robinson, Pomo-Wappo Park, Parque de la Luna for former mayor Abel De Luna, and Fish Somersal, honoring Laura Fish Somersal.

Somersal was born in 1892 and died in 1990. She was of Geyserville Wappo and Mihilakawna Pomo descent, known as the last fluent speaker of the Wappo language, and worked for decades as a basket weaver, cultural consultant, and educator on California Indian traditions. Sherrie Smith-Ferri, tribal historic officer for the Dry Creek Rancheria, told the city's Parks and Recreation Commission that Somersal "was a sweet, smart, powerful woman."

De Luna had his own case. He was Healdsburg's first Hispanic city councilmember and its first Hispanic mayor, founded La Luna Market where Casa del Sol now stands, and started the county's first Spanish-language radio station. He was in the room for the vote, seated with his wife, and much of the 40 minutes of public comment that night argued for naming the park after him instead.

The council split evenly at first between the two names. Mayor David Hagele recused himself because his home in Parkland Farms sits within 500 feet of the site. That left four votes, and after what the local paper described as an emotional discussion, the council landed 4-0 on Laura Fish Somersal. It is the first park in Healdsburg named for a woman, a person of color, or a Native American resident. Councilmember Ariel Kelley later said the choice was meant to align the park's values with Somersal's own commitment to language, craft, and land stewardship.

The naming was settled in a single council meeting. The park itself has taken much longer.

What Phase One Actually Buys

The full master plan, approved back in August 2023, reads like a wish list: restored riparian habitat along Foss Creek, sports fields and courts, an off-leash dog area, a community garden, a pump track, a large picnic pavilion, a picnic grove, and special-use gardens for pollinators and native plantings. A Press Democrat report from October 2024 repeated most of that list under the heading of what the park "would include."

But that full list was never what the city funded first. When the council directed staff to move forward, it scoped Phase 1 down to something narrower: infrastructure like utilities and stormwater treatment to support this phase and future ones, plus "other park amenities as funding allows, including a modest sports component." The dog park, the pump track, the community garden, the bandstand floated in earlier planning documents: those sit in the long-term vision, not in the guaranteed first build.

That gap between the master plan everyone remembers and the phase actually under design showed up again in the spring of 2025. A public open house on the Phase 1 schematic design was scheduled for April 3, then postponed. The city's stated reason was straightforward: after reviewing preliminary cost estimates received on March 31, the project team needed more time to make sure the proposed components actually fit the available funding.

The city has not published the estimates themselves, so the size of any gap between the design and the budget is not yet public.

Where the Timeline Actually Stands

The most recent public timeline from the city pointed to bidding and the start of construction for Phase 1 happening in early 2026. An earlier planning document had put it more loosely, as late 2025 or 2026. Neither source has offered a firm opening date. As of the most recent information the city has made public, that has not changed. No announcement of a groundbreaking or a new open house has surfaced to confirm whether the early-2026 target held.

For a resident trying to figure out whether to expect a ribbon cutting this year or next, the honest answer is that the city itself has not said. What is confirmed is the scope: a Phase 1 built around infrastructure and a modest sports component, not the full amenities list that circulated in 2023 and 2024 coverage.

What's Already Open, Right Now

While the built park waits on funding and bidding, the land it will eventually connect to is not waiting for anyone. The Healdsburg Ridge Open Space Preserve, accessible from the end of Arabian Way just south of the Saggio Hills site, has been open since 2008. Its trails already do what the new park's 26-acre open reserve is designed to extend: loop through oak woodland and grassland to overlooks of Fitch Mountain, the Mayacama range, and the Russian River, with a rest stop at Froggy Pond along the way. Nancy's Ridge, the All-the-Oaks Loop, and the Russian River Overlook trail are all reachable today, no construction schedule required.

Barbieri Brothers Park, the small park slated for absorption into the larger site, is also open now, with its quarter-mile walking path, playground, and half-court still doing the same job they have done for years while the bigger plan takes shape around them.

So the north end of Healdsburg is not really waiting on one project to finish. It already has a working trail network. What it is waiting on is the piece that turns a preserve and a small neighborhood park into a connected system with a dog area, a garden, and a name that took a full council meeting, and a genuine debate about whose history belongs on a sign, to settle.

If you're curious about how this corner of Healdsburg keeps changing, or want a closer look at what's happening near Parkland Farms and Saggio Hills, Ceci Cook is always happy to talk through what's on the ground north of town.