Copia “isn’t only brick and mortar,” said Margrit Mondavi, as she reflected on the latest news about Napa’s shuttered, dark and bankrupt center for food, wine and the arts.

Mondavi and her late husband, vintner Robert Mondavi, were on the ground floor of the center’s creation seven years ago. The Mondavis saw the center, with restaurants, gallery and performance spaces and demonstration kitchens and gardens, as a place to celebrate and advance Napa’s role in the wine and culinary worlds.

She remains a member of the center’s board of directors, and said Tuesday she’d been asked not to discuss what might be ahead for Copia while bankruptcy proceedings are underway. But Mondavi did talk wistfully about the ambitious project she and her husband had envisioned — a center that would put the working-class city of Napa on the food, wine and arts map.

“I close my eyes and think about the happy times (at Copia),” she said. “The opening day parade with Julia Child, the Taste 3 conference, the concerts, dinners at Julia’s Kitchen, walking through the beautiful gardens. To have such a thing, it was always exciting.”

Like many, Mondavi remains hopeful that something positive will emerge from the current financial wreckage.

“We are going to try to keep the dream alive,” she said. “This sustains me somewhat. The seed was planted but the tree that grew went somewhat awry. We’re looking toward the future. The idea will bloom again.”

However embattled Copia may be, she said, “it does have a legacy. It did change Napa.”

A cornerstone

Steve Carlin, developer of the Oxbow Public Market, which opened a year ago and shares a parking lot with Copia, said he would not have built his project there had it not been for Copia.

“It was two things” that led to his placing the market where it is, Carlin said. “It was the development of the Oxbow District and the requirement of parking, which a public market would need.”

The Oxbow District has bloomed in the last year with the opening of the Public Market, with its food stalls and shops. New wine tasting rooms, restaurants and food stores are just steps away.

Carlin said he viewed the bankruptcy filing as “a good thing, trying to correct” a failing situation. “Everyone knows Copia has not been operating on all cylinders for some time,” he said.

The potential prosperity of his own project is not linked to Copia, he said. “Our situation is independent. We’re not hurt or helped (by Copia’s closure). I see it as a neutral neighbor.

“A vibrant Copia, a healthy Copia, works well with what we’re doing,” he said. “But we haven’t seen that.”

Like Mondavi, Carlin said he is hopeful for Copia. “I don’t want to see a vacant lot,” he said. “I don’t see this as the end of Copia. Now’s the time to regroup and move forward. I think they will do it. We all see the potential.”

Larry Tsai, who for four years was Copia’s chief marketing officer, said Tuesday, “I’m sure I’m not alone in being saddened.

“It was a brilliant concept, created by a giant,” Tsai said, referring to Robert Mondavi. “It was wonderful to see it come to life staffed by some amazing people. For those brief moments in the sun, we were able to create excitement and energy.”

Tsai said under the leadership of then Copia President Arthur Jacobus, who replaced founding Director Peggy Loar and was then replaced by current CEO Garry McGuire, the center came close to operating in the black for the first time.

“In 2003, it was losing $10 million a year,” said Tsai. “By 2007, we were within $50,000 (of meeting operating expenses). We were beginning to see daylight.”

Even so, the center was significantly behind on its bond payments to lenders.

“I’m not sure what the future holds,” Tsai concluded, “but we all had a chance to do something great.”

The collapse of Copia “punched a hole in the synergy” of the revitalized Napa, said Evy Warshawski, artistic director of the Napa Valley Opera House. “We were all feeling so upbeat with all the building that was going on, the Oxbow District, the Westin opening. Suddenly everything is very quiet, and as one person has put it, ‘it’s as if the world has stopped spinning.’”

“Copia (officials) are putting their best foot forward,” she said, “but it’s what you have to do.”

Of primary concern to her, she added, is that its closure has resulted in “colleagues without jobs.”

Restaurateur Greg Cole, owner of Cole’s Chop House and Celadon on Main Street in Napa, said the potential reopening of the Napa Valley Opera House was one of the factors that led him to open Celadon 12 years ago.

“I hadn’t heard of the dream of Copia,” he said. Copia, which opened in 2001, was “a bonus. For me it was, ‘This is great — one more thing to make Napa a culinary center.’ Napa had been left out of the equation.”

Copia has been “a great asset to the community,” said Cole, who lives in Napa with his family. “I’ve gone to dinner there, gone to a movie, a concert.”

Copia’s struggle, Cole said, “is not good for the downtown or the Oxbow District, and on a human level for the people who worked at Copia. Coupled with the general direction of the economy, it’s not the direction we wanted to go or the news we wanted to hear. I’m saddened by the news but hoping they can renegotiate and come out a better, stronger Copia.”