It was known as Copia, and its official name also including the verbiage: “The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts.”
Napa Valley wine icon Robert Mondavi put up a million dollars in seed money to get the project going, and the center opened in November of 2001.
Copia helped kick-start the revitalization of downtown Napa, but it struggled financially from the very beginning. Finally, some $78 million in red ink later, Copia closed in late 2008.
Late last month, liquidation of Copia’s remains were put up for auction in the form of more than a thousand lots—everything from a vintage Easy Bake Oven to a pair of 8-foot-tall urns made out of thousands of bottle caps. The Copia complex now is slated for redevelopment.
So how did the auction go? According to reports, it “exceeded expectations.” You can read a full report here.
