As visitors and employees remain shut out after Copia’s unexpected closing Friday afternoon, interim chief executive Garry McGuire released a statement Monday about the struggling center.

“The current economic crisis has made it difficult to obtain capital and applied additional pressure to our financial turn-around,” McGuire said.

Copia “is working on a significant debt restructuring and liquidity program that will allow it to continue to serve its food-and-wine education mission,” McGuire wrote in an e-mail.

“Temporarily suspending Copia’s operations will protect the interests of our employees by securing their wages while we negotiate a go-forward plan.”

Any long-term plans or potential reopening date won’t be announced until after the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the statement.

In a separate story, McGuire told decanter.com, “We are in the final stages of negotiation to reach a resolution of the financial problems facing the center.”

The center would re-open on Dec. 1, Decanter reported. Copia’s Web site lists no special events until Dec. 3, when it is slated to host a winemaker dinner for Vision Cellars and Black Coyote Wines.

In September, Copia laid off 24 of its 80 full-time employees and introduced scaled-back seasonal operating hours of three days a week.

On Nov. 14, Copia announced plans to sell off its 12-acre riverfront property on the Oxbow in an effort to find cash to help service a $78 million debt created by years of operating in the red.

Copia leaders have said they hoped to lease back part of the current campus to continue a full slate of wine and food programs in Napa, while opening a new facility in San Francisco.

Calls to Copia’s bond insurer, ACA Financial Guaranty Corporation and interim CFO Joe Fischer were not returned by press time.