After 18 years of economic struggle, the Napa Valley Conference and Visitors Bureau plans to shut the Visitors Bureau in Napa Town Center and go through a radical reorganization.

The conference and visitors bureau will be known by a new name, the Napa Valley Destination Council, with a new mission that relies more on a Web site — legendarynapavalley.com — than a downtown storefront, said Jeri Gill, the organization’s interim CEO.

News that the Visitors Center, which attracted 130,000 tourists last year, was closing created shock waves through downtown Napa’s business community Tuesday.

“It will definitely have a detrimental effect, especially with Mervyns closing at the same time,” said Gary Woods, co-owner of Gillwoods Cafe in Napa Town Center.

“It’s one more little thing that adds up,” Woods said. “It will be a little more like 10 years ago, maybe more of a ghost town.”

“It will be a disaster,” said Kent Gardella, whose jewelry store is within a stone’s throw of the Visitors Center. “You have 130,000 people following signs saying Visitors Center and there’s nothing here? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Merchants at Napa Town Center were scheduled to meet today with the center owners to see if anything can be done to keep the Visitors Center in operation, Gardella said.

He would have suggested that perhaps the Visitors Center be moved to Copia, but Copia just announced that it’s scaling back to three days a week in the off-season, Gardella said.

George Altamura Jr., whose family owns Napa Town Center, said he was shocked by the abruptness of the planned closure. “Maybe there is something we could have done to keep the doors open,” he said.

The visitors bureau, now the Napa Valley Destination Council, plans to shut the Visitors Bureau before Nov. 1, Gill said. Seventy volunteers and four paid staff will be let go, she said.

Napa Valley chambers of commerce will be asked to stock the brochures and hand out advice in place of the Visitors Center, Gill said. The Napa Chamber of Commerce office is only a short distance away on First Street, she said.

Kate King, the chamber’s CEO, said her organization may need to expand hours and days of operation to serve tourists who now will not have a downtown information center. The chamber is currently closed on weekends.

Perhaps some of the center’s volunteers can be persuaded to bring their skills to the Napa chamber, King said. The chamber has many tourist-serving members who benefit from an information center, she said.

If signs are changed, a new tourist center could be in operation relatively quickly, King said. “It’s a matter of re-educating people who were here before,” she said.

First-time visitors won’t need re-education. They will go wherever the signs lead them, she said.

Internal changes

The bureau was spending about $2,500 a month to lease 2,500 square feet at Napa Town Center, Gill said. Although the bureau recouped the rent by leasing space to a vacation time share firm and a souvenir vendor, the bureau’s new board of directors decided this wasn’t the proper way to greet visitors, Gill said.

Besides the name change and the shutting of the Visitors Center, the new Napa Valley Destination Council will cease to be a member-sponsored organization, Gill said.

The bureau has 423 members — hotels, B&B, spas, restaurants and merchants — that pay a collective $167,000 in dues annually, Gill said. Unfortunately, there are 1,000 additional tourist-related businesses that are not members, she said.

Relatively few businesses were carrying the load for the entire Napa Valley, Gill said. Besides being inequitable, it distorted the advice that the bureau would give tourists looking for things to do and places to stay, she said.

If the new tourist council has no members, then every business can be treated equally on the Web site, Gill said. Legendarynapavalley.com should open within a month, she said.

For now, the council will rely on $100,000 in annual funding from the city of Napa, with a request in the works for $325,000 from Napa County, Gill said. The city council is scheduled to approve $50,000 of the $100,000 on Tuesday, she said.

To justify government funding, the tourist council will launch educational programs to enable employees in the wine and hospitality industries to better present the Napa Valley, Gill said.

The Napa Valley Destination Council should be considered a new organization that will need time to reinvent itself and sort out other ways to bring in revenue, Gill said.

“We don’t have all the answers yet as to what this looks like,” she said. “There may be some stubbed toes and some stumbles, but we know we’re on the road to success.”

In July, the bureau reshuffled its old board, bringing on high-profile new faces, including vintner Jack Cakebread as chair and Michael Chiarello, the celebrity chef who operates NapaStyle stores.

To unify marketing efforts, the bureau debuted an advertising tag line: “Napa Valley — Legendary.” A new approach is needed if the Napa Valley is to retain its luster in the competition against other wine destinations, leaders said.

Briefed Tuesday on the closure of the Visitors Center, Napa Mayor Jill Techel said the business impact may not be as dire as some predict. The chamber of commerce is easily found once signage is changed. Tourists will still have to come downtown, she said.

Techel agreed that the Web is increasingly where tourists get information before they visit a town. “To focus on that seems to make sense,” she said.

According to Gill, some four million visitors come to the Napa Valley annually, yet only 130,000 used the Visitors Center in downtown Napa.

If the city is to continue to financially support tourism marketing, the Napa Valley Destination Council will have to prove that it’s bringing in revenue for the city, Techel said.

Reynaldo Zertuche, general manager of the Embassy Suites on California Boulevard, said Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t heard that the conference and visitors bureau was remaking itself. He said he was puzzled by the “legendary” promotion. Santa Rosa might need to rebrand itself, but to most people the Napa Valley already has the same allure as Gucci and Prada luxury brands, he said.

To keep tourists coming downtown, the downtown business community might want to consider setting up its own visitors center using revenues from its property-based promotion district, Gardella said.