I love conflict. Heated debates, even better. Passionate people fighting over what they deem to be the worthiest cause: That’s the best. Maybe I miss my roots. The terse-tongued Manhattan street talk that ensued over things as meaningful as capitalizing on the 9/11 tragedy to the trivial, a “look” in the wrong direction. Regardless, I’ve been able to feed my feisty fix right here in Napa, where townies wax off for the good and bad of their favorite causes.
This season’s breaking of the buds (earlier than ever) caused many townsfolk to break more than just bread over the fate of Copia. I haven’t seen debates this heated since temperatures rose at the mere mention of Napa Pipe. Interestingly, Pipe developer Keith Rogal sits at the cornice of Copia’s current conflict, which bubbled over when he, together with Copia Liquidation Trust and bondholder ACA Financial Guaranty Corp., submitted plans to convert Copia into a five-story, 200-room hotel, to include underground parking, retail, food service and even a café. Equally debated is Rogal’s other plan to convert 8,200 square feet of the coveted campus into office space. More than just fingers wagged when nakedwines.com, an online retailer, relocated its headquarters to the Copia building at 500 First Street. All this amid the ongoing catfight over what is and isn’t appropriate “use” of the space.
Those for and against lobbied their cause at the March 4 City Council meeting, which, after four hours of contention, ended with council members contemplating an enactment of the 45-day moratorium ordinance. It took only as long as the March 18 council meeting to shoot down said ordinance, which some hoped would stall plans and progress at the site and let the powers that be reinterpret the land use ordinances that are controlling what can and can’t be done to the Copia site. The council did, however, stand behind the Planning Commission’s 2013 ruling on office space, which may or may not lead to the ousting of new tenants like nakedwines.com. How’s that for political triple talk? Though the moratorium failed to pass, ACA agreed to hold off on further “site activity” until the end of July. Mudslingers wonder if they’ll stand behind their word.
Those in opposition to Rogal’s plans include the Coalition to Preserve Copia. Muddying already murky waters, certain coalition members have eyes on taking control of the property. The proposed intent of such a play: to honor Copia’s original mission to become the beacon for all things wine and food. I imagine the commerce of it all would have to be mighty nifty as well.
But prominence and posturing aside, here’s the real issue at the heart of this heated debate: to further commercialize Napa Valley, or not.
As an outsider that’s now in, it’s obvious to even me that our community is in conflict over what Napa Valley wants to be when it grows up. The revitalization of downtown, which some credit to Copia, has made Napa proper more of a must-stay destination than ever before. Gone are the days where Napa served as the butt of the nightlife joke. Not so much anymore, as downtown has become the hub for mixing and mingling with hipster bars and world-class restaurants as mainstays.
The joke is dead on delivery—as are the romanticized notions of a quaint Napa Valley visit and way of life. Perhaps it’s disheartening to those townies who escaped to our fair land for one way of life, only to be presented with the notion of another. One that includes a Four Seasons at the tip of Calistoga, amid several other resorts and large-scale expansions, that will squelch what’s left of small town life in Napa Valley.
The reality is, the city of Napa has become more cosmopolitan than country. And maybe that’s just the natural evolution of things, the result of our tech-induced times, where many prefer connecting online to in-person engagements. A salute to an era where live telephone conversations have been kicked to the corner in favor of truncated tweets and texts. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to live in our land and enjoy the bustling growth and all that comes with it. And when we’re done with all that, we can rest easy knowing that with a northerly drive through winding roads and tree tunnels into Knights Valley, the Russian River and beyond, there’s countryside and sparsely populated parcels that still exist—at least for now.
