Developers have submitted plans for a five-star St. Regis resort on Stanly Ranch where a land use battle over a much larger golf resort and housing project was fought a decade ago.

Proponents say the 245-unit resort, designed to high environmental standards, could be a financial bonanza for the city of Napa, generating $60 million in revenue over the next 10 years.

This is a far different project than the Carefree Resorts mega-development of the late 1990s that ran into a buzzsaw of opposition, Beth Painter, the project’s local planning consultant, said Friday.

Carefree wanted to build the largest private development in city history — a 300-room resort, 600 homes, a golf course  and a retail center — on rolling pasture at the entrance to Carneros.

Environmentalists attacked the project as urban sprawl, prompting the City Council to vote in 1999 to put it on the ballot for voters to decide. The developer immediately withdrew the project.

St. Regis, a prestigious international hotel brand, wants to build a destination resort on 40 acres, with low-rise buildings largely out of public view from Highways 29 and 121, Painter said.

The 93-acre development would include 42 acres of vineyard and three acres for a 25,000-case winery, she said.

The St. Regis proposal will likely require a year of environmental analysis before going to public hearings, Marlene Demery, the city’s interim planning director, said Thursday.

There will be plenty of issues to study, including the project’s impact on the city’s water supply, how emergency services would be provided and the wisdom of placing a resort so far from downtown at the city’s southern edge, Demery said.

City Manager Mike Parness said it was flattering that a “world-renowned, high class organization” such as St. Regis would consider Napa for one of its few resorts. “We’ll take a long hard look at it and see how its fits in the larger scheme of things,” he said.

Councilmembers, who have been briefed individually by developer representatives, said the St. Regis was more attractive on first blush than the earlier Carefree Resorts plan.

“It seems well-done,” Mayor Jill Techel said Friday. “It’s certainly another name with a lot of status.”

Techel pledged full vetting of the project’s impacts. “We will have a lot of questions about it,” she said.

“I liked the concept,” Councilman Mark van Gorder said. “It’s a high-end resort, the kind of thing we’ve been wanting to have.”

Besides being largely hidden from view, the St. Regis would boost city revenues by $5 million to $6 million a year, van Gorder said. “That’s a big chunk, about 10 percent of our budget,” he said.

Çouncilman Peter Mott said it was impressive that Napa was attracting yet another high-end hotel. “We’re kind of a shining diamond right now,” he said.

Another prestige project, the Westin Verasa, opened last month in downtown. An Avia hotel is under construction on First Street. A 351-room Ritz-Carlton resort, estimated to cost $270 million, got council approval in July for First Street at Silverado Trail, but does not yet have financing.

While the St. Regis would “obviously help us financially, that’s not the only issue I’ll be looking at,” Mott said. “The question is, does it belong on the outskirts of Napa. How will it support our downtown and the city as a whole?”

Ginny Simms, a leader of Get A Grip On Growth which opposed the Carefree Resorts plan, was briefed Friday morning on the St. Regis proposal by Painter and Mark Couchman, president of Stanly Ranch Vineyards which owns the site.

“When we consider that it’s replacing 900 homes and all other kinds of things, it’s probably acceptable,” Simms said. But the resort would only add to the area’s traffic problems and worsen the city’s shortage of housing for lower-wage workers, she said.

“St. Regis has been looking in Napa County for a wine country, vineyard-oriented destination resort for quite a long time,” Painter said. It took more than a year of planning to come up with the proposal submitted to city planners last week, she said.

There is virtually no other site in the city that could handle a vineyard-oriented resort, while the county is essentially off limits to new resorts,  Painter said.

The St. Regis proposal was put together by Jeff Selby, a resident of Colorado who is the managing partner of S.R. Napa LLS, Painter said.

“Our goal is to make this resort a win-win for the city of Napa and its residents,” Selby said in a press release. “The project design preserves, protects and enhances the natural resources and agricultural character of the site.”

In an interview, Selby described St. Regis as “one of the premier luxury brands,” in the same league as Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons.

St. Regis is a prestige brand of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Starwood has 850 properties worldwide of which 13 are St. Regis. Starwood also owned the Westin brand.

There are currently four St. Regis resorts in Aspen, Bora Bora, Mallorca and Southern California.

Planning for the St. Regis Napa Valley started before the nation’s current financial crisis, Selby said. Because the city’s approval process is a long one, hopefully economic conditions will be greatly improved when it’s time to build, he said.

The resort, which is currently planted in grapes, would be approached on a one-way road through the historic double row of eucalyptus near Highway 12/121. The road would be improved for vehicles, with public paths for cyclists and walkers.

Resort guests would depart on the road built several years ago by Stanly Ranch Vineyards to serve the 700-acre property.

In 2003, Stanly Ranch Vineyards won city approval to carve the ranch into 18 parcels for vineyard-oriented estate homes and six wineries with public tours and tastings.

Merryvale Vineyards built Starmont Winery in 2006. The winery proposed for the St. Regis project would be Stanly Ranch’s second winery.

The St. Regis project would require changing the site’s general plan designation from Resource Area to Tourist Commercial, with a similar change of zoning.

The development plan talks of shuttles to ferry guests to downtown Napa. A water taxi might be established to carry visitors to downtown using the Napa River.

The developers would strive to have the project qualify for LEED Silver certification, representing a high level of sustainable design and operation.

Currently city water is used to irrigate vineyards on the property. The resort would use 43,500 more gallons daily than the vineyard, according to the applicant.

The main resort structure would have 51 guest units. The bulk of the accommodations would be spread out in cottages and clustered smaller buildings.

These perimeter units, containing two to four bedrooms, would be sold to second-home investors who would stay at the resort part-time. Guests would be encouraged to travel through the resort on golf carts.