Settlement may clear way for Napa day care to open in Alta Heights area
July 15.
In a news release Thursday afternoon, the Alta Heights Neighborhood Coalition announced it struck a deal late Wednesday with Milli Pintacsi to withdraw its suit against the operator of Le Petit Elephant Nursery and Preschool. The agreement apparently clears a path for Pintacsi to convert a dormant Latter-day Saints church on Chapel Hill Drive into a day care center that eventually will host up to 250 children on weekdays.
Coalition member Thai Pham pointed to a range of limits on event rentals – and a prohibition on offering the building for adult-focused gatherings like weddings – as reasons for Alta Heights residents to drop their litigation against Pintacsi and welcome the day care into the neighborhood.
“By participating and entering this mediated settlement and not continuing to pursue litigation, the neighborhood coalition shows that it was never against daycare but sought to have it operate within the bounds promised by Le Petit Elephant and applicable laws,” Pham wrote.
An email and voicemail left with Pintacsi late Thursday were not immediately
returned.
According to the Alta Heights coalition’s announcement, Le Petit Elephant would initially be limited to caring for 200 children in its first year and 225 in its second before seeing the cap raised to 250 in its third year and beyond.
The day care will be able to rent out the building on nights and weekends, but only for events and celebrations for guests 17 and younger. No weddings, anniversary celebrations, retirement parties or other adult-targeted events would be allowed. Sports tournaments and competitions also would be barred.
Le Petit Elephant would be allowed to host no more than one youth-focused “ancillary” event per weeknight, with up to 70 combined children and adults in attendance. Saturday gatherings would be allowed up to 126 children, while Sunday gatherings would be permitted only on the second and fourth Sundays of the month, with up to 96 children present.
The agreement ends a battle that began in the spring of 2024, when Pintacsi’s day care plan won the support of the city Planning Commission and City Council. In June, project opponents who had formed the Alta Heights coalition sued the city and Pintacsi in Napa County Superior Court to block the plan.
Alta Heights residents who filed the suit argued that the planned day care would violate the California Environmental Quality Act, as well as the city’s zoning laws and general plan governing land uses.
In addition, opponents warned the child care center would generate extra traffic that could worsen congestion and make it more difficult for Alta Heights residents to escape a major wildfire.
Pintacsi alleged the day care’s would-be neighbors were standing up for their personal interests at the expense of other Napans, especially parents struggling to find affordable child care services.
“This is a level of selfishness that the Napa community has never encountered — the personal preferences of the few fighting against the desperate needs of the many,” she told the Napa Valley Register in December.
Negotiations between the coalition and Pintacsi took place later in the year, and a lawyer for the group suggested it could eventually accept a child care center if its operator could prove she could minimize its stress on the surrounding area.
“We’re hoping it can be done; we’re just asking her to show it,” attorney Kevin Block told the Register, suggesting that Le Petit Elephant’s foes would consider accepting a gradual ramp-up in the center’s capacity.