What was I thinking?

By Kevin Courtney

I admit it. When Copia opened seven years ago, I thought something mighty fine had come to town.

Many folks rejected Copia on first look — too hoity-toity, too expensive, not enough there there. None of that bothered me.

I liked the strung-together snippets of movie dinner scenes in the Forks in the Road exhibit. I liked the gardens and the art shows. The Friday night movies ratcheted up my cultural life a notch.

Yes, Copia charged $12.50 for general admission and much more for cooking and wine classes, but I didn’t see that as a problem. The classes didn’t interest me. I would never pay the admission. As a reporter, I would get in free.

Free seemed about right. As it turned out, a lot of other people thought so, too.

I wrote stories about how Copia expected to attract 300,000 visitors its first year, maybe even more. That led to stories about how Copia-bound visitors would clog our streets, making life for locals a living hell.

I know. It’s bizarre. But traffic jams were a big fear in 2001.

Copia, of course, never came close to hitting 300,000 visitors. And $12.50 eventually got reduced to zero. Even zero proved too much. People continued to stay away in droves.

How did I so misjudge Copia’s chances for success? Shouldn’t a savvy reporter have seen the big red flags from the Register building a mile away?

I think I was led astray in the following ways:

1. I don’t understand rich people. I thought they would cough up whatever it took to keep Copia afloat. Yes, Copia cost an obscene amount of money, at least by Napa standards, but this was the wine elite’s vanity project. How could it fail? It served their commercial interests.

2. I don’t understand tourists. If they’ll shell out big bucks for expensive Napa Valley wines, hotels and restaurants, why wouldn’t Copia be right up their alley? Spiffy new downtown signage would herd them there. End of story.

3. Robert Mondavi. The man personified success. He blessed Copia with his vision and start-up dollars. I never expected Mondavi to fail at anything.

4. Boosterism. I got caught up in the groundswell of local pride at having a no-man’s-land near downtown transformed by a big-name New York architect into something tourist worthy. My capacity for critical thinking was that of a sheep.

The thing that impressed me the most on my first visit to Copia was the bathrooms. They were ultra cool, unbelievably immaculate and — get this — decorated with orchids. Real orchids.

Those first Copia press releases were equally elegant, with embossed images of the Roman goddess Copia painted in what seemed to be 24k gold.

Copia appeared to be rolling in money, style and vision. Its success would float lesser ships. Soon even the most humble among us would be living a facsimile of Mondavi’s much-touted good life. Pass the goat cheese.

Yet, during weekday visits to Copia I would always marvel at how hushed and empty it appeared. A virtual mausoleum. Where was everybody? On a garden tour?

Visitor cars hardly made a dent in the north parking lot, much less spilled over to the south lot. Shouldn’t that have told me something?

Some locals smelled a rat from day one. One look and they knew the wine goddess wore no clothes. They saw Copia as elitist, confused, irrelevant. They wondered who in their right mind would return more than once.

These skeptics were dismissed as local yokels. Folks lacking in sophistication. And maybe they were. They were also right.

Only in the last few years did I begin to smell desperation at Copia. Downsize followed downsize. Key people disappeared. New people announced reorganization plans. Their replacements announced more reorganization plans.

When Copia began unraveling at warp speed this fall, it had largely ceased to matter to most Napans, myself included.

Yet Copia leaves a legacy. It was the catalyst for commercial development in the surrounding Oxbow District.

The tourists are coming. They just won’t be coming to Copia.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com

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