Club Memberships Returned : Settlement Reached in Coto de Caza Dispute

Residents of the exclusive Coto de Caza community in Trabuco Canyon have taken down their protest signs after a developer agreed to reinstate their lifetime memberships in the project’s posh country club.

“I think they’ve learned their lesson,” Barnard F. Klein, an attorney for 492 of the club’s 800 members said Thursday after reaching an out-of-court settlement with Coto de Caza Ltd.

Coto de Caza’s residents rebelled last December after the developer suddenly announced that all memberships in the club would have to be renewed annually and could be revoked “at will” by the developer.

Residents printed bumper stickers and erected lawn signs that read “Coto de Caza, The Broken Promise.” They had always believed that they held permanent memberships in the club, said Klein, a nine-year resident of the community.

Then last week, after lengthy negotiations with Klein and other club members who had threatened to sue, Coto de Caza Ltd. signed an agreement returning lifetime memberships to club members.

‘It Didn’t Work’

“We tried to standardize ownerships, and it didn’t work,” Coto de Caza President John Yelverton conceded Thursday.

He said the company had tried to find a single method of dealing with new club members and with those who had bought memberships when the development first opened 18 years ago. Some of those people “felt like they had some privileges which we were not necessarily sure that they had,” Yelverton said.

But, he said, the company now acknowledges that “they do have permanent ownerships.”

According to Klein, the issue involved far more than a contractual dispute over an athletic club; it concerned the center of life in their expensive but isolated, canyon community.

“This is a remote place. There’s no easy way of getting into town, and the club represents a place for people to do their activities,” Klein said.

Aside from its large pool, tennis courts, racquetball courts and whirlpool baths, Coto de Caza’s athletic club boasts a basketball court, two bowling lanes, a private bar, a “hunt lodge” with extensive trap-shooting facilities and an equestrian show ring and stables that were used in the 1984 Olympics.

Purchased Memberships

Over the past 18 years, most members have joined the club when they purchased their $200,000-to-multimillion-dollar homes in Coto de Caza, Klein said. Some members, however, were not residents but had simply purchased “permanent” memberships for about $1,500 each, the attorney said.

Loud protests followed last December’s announcement by the developer that all club members now held annual memberships. In February, club members picketed at the televised “grand opening” of Coto de Caza’s 18-hole golf course. Residents also complained to Coto de Caza Ltd.’s corporate owners, Chevron Land & Development, Arvida Disney and City Federal Savings Bank in Cincinnati, Klein said.

Under terms of the out-of-court settlement, Klein and Yelverton said, current club members are being notified that they have lifetime memberships and may transfer them when they sell their homes. The agreement also establishes an advisory board of club members to consult with the developer on club management.

Membership in Coto de Caza’s new golf course--and in an even more spacious sports facility that is planned--will be limited under the agreement to those people who are club members by June 30, Klein said.