COPIA, The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts, located in Napa Valley, California's wine country, closed temporarily on Nov. 21, while the non-profit goes through bankruptcy and restructures with the intention of reemerging under more sustainable terms. Launched seven years ago with ambitious intentions by a generous gift of $20 million from one of the well established local wineries, Robert Mondavi, the complex was designed to be Napa Valley's cultural center, providing a hub for the exploration, celebration and sharing of the pleasures and benefits of wine, its relationship to food and its significance within our culture. COPIA offered visitors exceptional wine and food-tasting programs, cooking and wine classes, exhibitions, organic gardens, films, concerts, fine and casual dining, and shopping for local products. While the Mondavi donation gave the effort its momentum it took another $35 million by seventy subsequent donors to launch the complex and an additional $70 million bond in the years to follow. The COPIA facility was designed as a non-profit discovery center that would be both an educational and an entertainment facility which would serve the local community and tourism, celebrating the incorporation of wine into life. In partnership with the University of California at Davis, the Cornell University School of Restaurant and Hotel Administration, and the American Institute of Wine & Food, COPIA joined forces to develop the idea into a major not-for-profit cultural institution.
But after struggling to define itself, its mission, remain solvent and see its ambitions to fruition the group couldn't sustain its annual operating losses any longer and decided that a restructuring was the best option if it was to reemerge with hope for a future. Without a foundation or an endowment, the operation maintained too much debt to function in its existing format. Events were beautifully done in the best possible taste, often to the point of being considered "highbrow" by many, but the money spent to accomplish that wasn't being offset in the fees being charged, or the volume of business through the door, and that just wasn't a sustainable business model. In addition to owning the land and facilities, and the debt to go with those, COPIA's downtown Napa Valley location was away from Route 29, putting it at a disadvantage when vying for tourist dollars.
For now there are numerous questions unanswered, but most of all there is the question of just what COPIA is by definition; is it a museum, a cooking school, a wine-industry promotional space, a community center with wine at its center, a center for the arts, or any of the other guises that have appeared over its last seven years. While Ms. Mondavi did suggest that, "Maybe the legacy of COPIA is in the idea of food, wine and the arts, not in the bricks and mortar”, neither the board members nor staff have spoken publicly once the facility filed its bankruptcy proceedings other than a brief comment by the chief executive, Garry McGuire Jr., who said, “We recently have taken intensive measures to overcome our deteriorating liquidity position.” One possible scenario has COPIA considering the move of selling off the property and then renting the facility back in order to crawl out from the mounting debt. And with that shift the facility may find it equally necessary to balance some of its loftier goals with some that would be more community centric. A glimpse of that possibility could be seen just before the bankruptcy filing when it was showing classic movies, offering gingerbread house making workshops, and planning a hot-chocolate party at the end of the Napa Valley Holiday Parade.
