Staff Had Used Own Money to Help Ailing Hotel : Several Balboa Inn Workers Fired

Operators of the Balboa Inn dismissed the hotel’s general manager and several other employees Friday, two days after a Times account detailed how the workers had spent their own money paying the seaside inn’s bills after the owners filed for bankruptcy protection.

Karyn Philippsen, general manager of the historic Newport Beach hotel, said she invested about $2,000 of her own money and had worked seven days a week at the hotel since it fell on hard times several months ago. In recent months, other employees bought supplies for the hotel, took laundry home and shared paychecks to keep the inn operating.

In all, the hotel had about 22 employees before the dismissals Friday.

Officers at Griswold Development Corp., the Costa Mesa-based general partner and manager of the hotel, declined to comment.

Earlier this week, however, George Auger, Griswold’s chief financial officer, had described Philippsen and the other hotel employees as “really a dedicated crew.” On Friday, a spokeswoman at the hotel said Auger was “not available.”

Asked when Auger might be available, the spokeswoman said “never.”

Griswold and a group of 11 limited partners, including basketball stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Ralph Sampson, bought the hotel for $4.2 million in 1985. Griswold undertook a $2-million renovation of the hotel but, in the increasingly competitive hotel business in Orange County, the Balboa Inn had trouble attracting customers.

Completed in 1929, the Balboa Inn is a certified national historical site and one of the oldest buildings in Orange County. Room rates range from $95 to $260 a night, but the hotel’s occupancy rate has only been about 40%.