If you have driven the half-mile between Healdsburg Avenue and University Street this year, you already know March Avenue by its cones. Lanes have narrowed, detour signs have pointed drivers toward Powell Avenue, and the pavement that has been patched and chip-sealed for a decade has finally been torn out down to the base. As of the first week of September, the alternating closures that ran through late August are behind you. Crews are moving into striping and signage now, with the whole project expected to wrap by the end of October.
That much is public record. What is less obvious, and what most residents driving this stretch have not connected, is that March Avenue was never really a standalone repaving job. It is one piece of a slower, quieter effort to stitch Healdsburg's neighborhoods, schools, and medical offices together on foot and by bike, and the next piece of that same effort is already on the city's books for a different street.
What's actually finishing this month
Larry Zimmer, Healdsburg's public works and transportation director, has told the City Council that March Avenue ranks among the two most complained-about streets in town, and the fix has cost $3.35 million. Most of that came from outside the city: roughly $2.1 million from a state grant and $700,000 from a county grant, with the remaining $558,438 covered by local funds. That split matters if you have ever wondered why a project the Council approved back in June 2025 did not break ground until this spring. Grant-funded infrastructure moves at the speed of the grant cycle, not the speed of the pothole.
What you are getting for that money is more than fresh asphalt. The new bike lanes are 4.5 feet wide with a 2-foot striped buffer separating them from traffic on both sides of the street, a meaningful upgrade from the unprotected lanes that existed before. Flashing crossing beacons have gone in at Lupine Road and Prentice Drive, curb ramps at every intersection have been brought up to ADA compliance, and bulbouts now shorten the distance pedestrians have to cross. This is the road that connects north Healdsburg neighborhoods to Healdsburg Hospital and Alliance Medical Center, to Healdsburg High School, and to the shopping centers anchored by Big John's grocery and Garrett's Ace Hardware. A resident walking a kid to school or driving to a hospital appointment is the intended user here, not a tourist.
The fight over four feet
The design did not arrive without disagreement, and the disagreement tells you something about how this town thinks about its streets. When the project came before the City Council, the approved plan reduced the bike lane to 4.5 feet to make room for the buffer. Council member Ariel Kelley pushed back, arguing the driving lane should shrink instead so the bike lane could grow, on the theory that narrower car lanes slow traffic down. Principal Engineer Clay Thistle countered that a narrower driving lane could affect emergency vehicle response times on a road that serves a hospital.
Kelley's question during that exchange gets at the real tension:
"Do we want this to feel like a highway or a neighborhood?"
The compromise that emerged, buffered bike lanes plus a posted speed reduction from 30 miles per hour to 25, splits the difference rather than resolving it outright. That is worth knowing if you live on or near March Avenue, because the next time a street redesign comes up for a council vote in this town, this is the argument you will hear again.
The project nobody has linked together yet
Here is the part that does not show up on the March Avenue project page. Healdsburg has spent nearly two decades building the Foss Creek Pathway, a 4.1-mile paved route for walking and biking that runs alongside the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad line from Front Street to the Healdsburg Community Center. It has been popular enough to earn a Golden Spoke Award from the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, and the most recent published counts showed daily use above 300 people, with roughly 75 of them on bikes.
A few numbers worth sitting with:
- In development since 2006, making it one of the longest-running active-transportation projects in the county
- 4.1 miles connecting downtown, the community center, Veteran's Memorial Beach Park, and the Carson Warner Memorial Skate Park
- Two segments that, as of a few years ago, were still unbuilt
Those last two segments are the connection most residents have not made. One third-of-a-mile piece was slated to be built as part of the private North Village development. The final half-mile is meant to be folded into the Healdsburg Avenue Complete Streets Project, a much larger road diet that would reduce Healdsburg Avenue from five lanes to three between Powell Avenue and the northern city limit, replacing the extra capacity with protected Class IV bikeways and pedestrian refuge islands. City planning documents called for underground utility work in 2025 ahead of surface improvements this year, with full completion projected for 2028.
Put those two facts side by side and the picture changes. March Avenue and Healdsburg Avenue are not two unrelated headaches for drivers this year. They are pieces of one long plan to link neighborhoods, downtown, the hospital corridor, and eventually a future SMART rail station, all threaded through the same pathway network that started with a single stretch along Foss Creek twenty years ago.
Your fall route, in plain terms
For anyone who drives, bikes, or walks this part of town regularly, the practical takeaway is simple. March Avenue's disruptive phase, the daily alternating closures, is over. What remains is striping and signage, work that does not require full road closures, with the project targeted for completion by the end of October. If you commute past University Street toward the hospital or the high school, expect a smoother, wider-shouldered ride by the end of next month.
The bigger disruption is still ahead. Once the Healdsburg Avenue project breaks ground, expect a longer construction window given the scope, a full lane reduction on one of the city's busier corridors. The upside on the other end is a finished Foss Creek Pathway, closing a gap that has existed since the plan was first drawn up.
A town that builds this way on purpose
None of this is flashy. There is no ribbon-cutting for a striping crew, and a road diet rarely makes anyone's list of reasons to love a place. But watching Healdsburg invest in the connective tissue between its neighborhoods, its schools, and its hospital, one grant cycle at a time, says something about how the town sees itself. It is not building for the visitor rolling through on a Saturday. It is building for the person walking a kid to Healdsburg High School on a Tuesday morning, or the cyclist who has been counted among those 75 daily riders on Foss Creek Pathway for years.
I have watched this town evolve one paving project and one grant cycle at a time for over two decades, and the pattern rarely changes. It builds slowly, it builds toward connection, and it usually takes longer than anyone would like. If you are curious about how projects like these shape which streets and neighborhoods hold their value here, or you just want to talk through what is changing in the part of Healdsburg you call home, Sue Winton is always glad to have that conversation. Let's Connect.
