A dream died on Monday.

Copia: The Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in downtown Napa filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Even if, as Copia leaders hope, it emerges from bankruptcy and is solvent within six months, a chapter in the life of the Napa Valley has closed.

Unanimity of opinion about this development will be hard to find.

Some residents of the city of Napa have never cottoned to Copia, seeing at as an elitist institution in a working-class town. They may see the failure as the collapse of an arrogant enterprise that only fitfully saw the city and its residents as a part of its constituency.

Others will have the opposite view. Among these are the 60 or so current employees of Copia, the many patrons of Julia’s Kitchen, the fans of Copia concerts, movies and cooking classes, the non-profits and business groups that have used its facilities, the musicians, artists and performers who have been featured there, the neighboring businesses that sought synergy with the center, the civic and business leaders who hoped for success as a reflection of the city’s economic and cultural bounty.

These people will see Copia’s bow to bankruptcy as a major setback.

Somehow, both sides are right.

In our view, Copia’s vision was a mixture of grand and grandiose from the start.

The idea that Napa can host a center celebrating food and wine is certainly legitimate. Wine and grapegrowing are the defining features of our valley, our economy and our culture. The expansion in the city of Napa of tasting rooms, fine dining establishments and high-end inns, once Upvalley exclusives, is just one symbol of the primacy of the wine industry here. The Napa Valley Vintners’ estimate that the industry supports 40,000 jobs here, from bottling lines to marketing firms to restaurants.

In those respects, there can be no better place than Napa to toast the wine world, particularly given that the people with the Copia dream were the late Robert Mondavi and his widow, Margrit.

Yet Copia faced many obstacles, some of its own making. Those include an unclear and unrealistic financial plan, with hoped-for visitor counts and regional interest that never materialized. Another is the building itself. Visitors who at one time paid $12.50 per customer to enter wondered whether they were in a foodie museum, an art gallery, a restaurant and book store or just a long, light-filled concourse at the edge of the Napa River.

The center opened in November 2001, two months after the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks began their secondary effect of casting a pall over the tourism and travel economy. The dot-com bubble popped around the same time, further derailing fast-track dreams of success.

Turning around a just-launched ship in these waters was perhaps too much to expect.

In a press release announcing the Chapter 11 petition, Copia CEO Garry McGuire said he hopes the center can emerge from bankruptcy in six months and find a profitable niche. McGuire has tried to drive the center towards a Web-based, food-and-wine education model that he believes has a chance of success, but is riding into a strong economic headwind.

We wish him and the center success. But if Copia’s history is any guide, it will be a hard road.