If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

ACA Financial Guaranty, the owner of Copia’s $78 million debt, will try a second time to sell the key downtown property, located at 500 First St. in Napa. An asking price was not provided.

ACA first attempted to sell the 17-acre Copia complex in 2010, without success.

After that, New-York based ACA ran into roadblocks in trying to redevelop the site and lease space to short-term renters, with critics objecting to changes that would diminish Copia’s potential to become a center for cultural or community events again.

Rather than try to come up with a redevelopment plan on its own, now ACA Financial Guaranty hopes to unload the property to someone with enough cash and who is willing to go through the city’s approval process to create a master plan for the entire site.

“ACA has never (intended to be) a long term holder of the property,” said Maria Cheng, managing director at ACA Financial Guaranty. “The time is right to try to sell Copia again. “There are a lot of transactions taking place in the real estate market in Northern California. I think there’s sufficient demand to test the market.”

Whom does she envisioned as a likely buyer? Cheng said, “That is something that is to be defined. We’re in the exploratory stage” of trying to sell the property.

“The marketplace” will determine if the sale would include the entire Copia complex, including the south parking lot, she said, declining to provide a proposed sale price.

ACA was owed $78 million when Copia closed and filed for bankruptcy in 2008. This is a sum that ACA is unlikely to come close to obtaining if it can sell the property, according to some experts.

In 2010, real estate broker Jerry Pietroforte of Alvarez Marsal Real Estate Advisory Services was hired to try to sell the property.

“I don’t know if the property is worth $78 million,” Pietroforte said at the time. “The objective is to maximize recovery for a client within the bounds of an appropriate use for the community.”

According to bankruptcy court documents, in late 2008 Copia estimated the value of the property at $30 million. In March 2009, the property was appraised at $24,860,000.

Gary Van Dam of Strong Hayden Commercial Real Estate said the market won’t sustain a price tag of $78 million. The broker estimated the property’s value in the middle to upper $20 million range, but said it would be hard to tell at this point. “There’s not enough information about what can be done to the property,” he said.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in the property because the economy is improving and all the development in the city of Napa,” said Jim Cantrell, who is managing the Copia Liquidating Trust. The trust was created to manage the bankruptcy and property assets.

As of Friday, Cantrell said he wasn’t sure what the listing price would be. “Our goal is to reinvent the property for the good of the community. It was such a visible asset and it still is. It can have a major impact on the city.”

In 2011, local developer Keith Rogal was hired by ACA and the Copia Liquidating Trust to create a reuse plan for the property.

The Trust attempted to sign leases with financial offices on the top floor of the building, but dissenters complained that such uses were not appropriate for the prestigious space.

After both the Planning Commission and the City Council agreed with those who wanted to see more innovative development at the Copia location, the City Council voiced concern over the lack of clarity in city policies for allowed and desired uses at the site.

In July, the council asked that city staff explore requiring the Copia Liquidation Trust and Rogal to implement a site master plan, which is considerably more in-depth in outlining planned development. That process continues.

Now that ACA is about to make a move to sell the property, this could create an opening for one set of developers who had objected to recent plans to site redevelopment to put in their own offer, analysts said.

John Salmon represents the Coalition to Preserve Copia, a group of local investors and business people, including developer Harry Price, who’d like to shape the future of the center and property. The group made a previous offer to buy the Copia complex that ACA rejected.

“We were hopeful they would put it on the market because there are a lot of people that would be interested in repurposing the property,” including the Coalition, said Salmon said Friday.

“We are interested in the building and will wait to see how they propose to put it on the market,” and at what price, he said.

Salmon said it was not reasonable to expect to pay $78 million for the property. He wouldn’t elaborate on what he’d offer, saying only “somewhere north of $20 million and less than $78 million.”

Regardless of who ends up purchasing the property, buyers “should be mindful of what the community is interested in seeing there,” said Salmon.

Rogal could not be reached for comment on Friday.