Pebble Beach--Who Gets to Play? : Real estate: The new Japanese owner wants to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for golf memberships. Governments, fearful that the plan may limit public access to a sizable stretch of coast, are watching closely.

In 1919, the grandnephew and namesake of telegraph inventor Samuel F. B. Morse raised $1.4 million to buy chunks of the Monterey Peninsula owned by heirs of the Big Four railroad magnates--Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington. Included in the deal was the Del Monte Forest, where a lodge and a golf course were under construction along a rugged stretch of central coast known as Pebble Beach.

In the decades since, various owners of the world-famous lodge, links and environs have had to battle slow-growth proponents over plans to build condos, houses and other golf courses amid the coastal dunes and the forest’s thick stands of Monterey pine and cypress trees.

But few issues have teed people off like the plan of Pebble Beach Golf Links’ controversial new Japanese owner to set aside starting times and hotel rooms for members of a private Pebble Beach National Club, who would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of joining.

At stake is “more than just golf,” said Jim Myers, executive vice president of American International Golf Resorts, a Marin County developer and broker of golf course transactions. “The perception in the golfing community is that they are trying to take a ‘national landmark’ and turn it private.”

Indeed, although Pebble Beach has always been privately owned, it has remained open to the public--anyone who could afford the lofty greens fees, that is. In that way, the public has kept access to the stretch of rocky coastline made famous by coverage of the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am tournament, now the AT&T; Pro-Am.

Nearby residents and some Monterey County and California Coastal Commission officials fear that the change could ultimately deny access to the scenic shoreline to all but privileged members. Moreover, they say, allowing a private club at Pebble Beach could set a dangerous precedent that could result in “creeping privatization” elsewhere along the coast.

On Tuesday, the proposal comes before the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, which administers the local land use plan under the state Coastal Act. The county Planning Commission forwarded the plan with a tacit recommendation that it be approved.

Pebble Beach Co. officials say they have no intention of making the trophy course totally private. Rather, golf tycoon Minoru Isutani sees membership sales as a way to raise much-needed cash to pay off his estimated $830-million debt from the purchase.

Clubs are standard in golf-crazy Japan, where wealthy individuals or corporations pay as much as $2 million to join and where memberships are traded on an exchange like commodities. In recent years, Japanese investors in public courses in the United States have tended to make them private, marketing the memberships in Japan.

Pebble Beach Co. officials have spent recent weeks trying to allay concerns that the course would become completely private. The concern, they say, originated with a “speculative news article” that appeared in the Japanese press in March and sparked widespread U.S. coverage.

The prestigious newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that Cosmo World Corp., Isutani’s Beverly Hills-based golf course development company, planned to market more than 700 “exorbitant” memberships in Japan, at an estimated $740,000 each, that would “effectively close” Pebble Beach to the public.

At that time, Pebble Beach officials say, a membership plan was indeed being contemplated, but details had not been decided. In what officials now admit was a public relations gaffe, the company did not initially respond. Another miscalculation was to underestimate the public outcry that would result.

The report “raised the specter . . . of an exclusive enclave of members,” acknowledged Thomas H. Jamison, a lawyer for Pebble Beach Co. in Monterey. County supervisors demanded a 90-day waiting period to study the idea.

The fact that media reports continue to link absentee owner Isutani to the yakuza, Japan’s version of the Mafia, hasn’t helped his cause. Nor have earlier reports that focused on allegations of exorbitantly priced memberships at some of Isutani’s eight golf courses in Japan.

In April, Pebble Beach Co. formally presented its membership plan. Under the proposal, members could reserve starting times at Pebble Beach as much as five years out when they book one of 60 reserved rooms at the Lodge or the company’s nearby Inn at Spanish Bay. Two hours of prime midmorning tee times, typically taken by hotel guests under the current system, would be set aside for members. Members also could reserve at one of Pebble Beach Co.’s three other courses--Spyglass Hill, Spanish Bay and Old Del Monte.

To ensure that “outsiders” would not be shut out, the last half-hour of Pebble Beach starting times would be set aside for those who were not guests or members. In addition, outsiders would continue to be able to book available times the day before play.

The company also agreed to monitor play annually to determine what percentage of players are members, hotel guests and outsiders.

“It never was a plan to close it off from the public,” said Joseph E. Petrillo, a Pebble Beach Co. attorney in San Francisco. “It was too big a hassle.”

Despite the company’s assurances to the contrary, an analysis by Diane Landry, a Coastal Commission staff attorney in Santa Cruz, concluded that Pebble Beach Co.’s plan would drastically cut the percentage of non-guest outsiders using the course.

That, the commission contended, would constitute a major change in the property’s land use and would require a permit and an amendment to the land use plan.

Peter M. Douglas, the commission’s executive director, said the proposal warrants a public review. “This particular project may be OK, but we need to be sure there aren’t subsequent conversions that make it totally private,” said Douglas, who as a teen-ager caddied at Pebble Beach.

“This is a precedent,” he added. “The issue is much bigger than Pebble Beach.” Douglas noted that the commission has gotten inquiries about converting to private clubs from resort developers in Santa Barbara and elsewhere along the coast.

In an interview in Pebble Beach Co.’s offices, President Tom Oliver said a maximum of 1,500 memberships would be sold. Many of those presumably would go to Japanese, who would use the course on an occasional basis at most, he added.

Although the membership price has not been set, Oliver said the figure would probably be less than half the $740,000 “rumored amount.” That would still make Pebble Beach by far the priciest club in the United States, where the current top membership is about $200,000.

To be sure, the fact that Pebble Beach is considered a public course might strike some duffers as laughable. With greens fees of $200 ($175 for Lodge guests), the course is already out of reach of many golfers.

Those who do play say the course is in fine shape. Ted Honda, executive vice president of Cosmo World, said Cosmo has invested at least $1 million in improvements to prepare for next year’s U.S. Open.

Despite Pebble Beach’s prestige, Isutani could find memberships a tough sell in Japan. The souring economy has cooled Japanese executives’ ardor for overseas golfing jaunts.

U.S. golfers, meanwhile, are sharply divided in their views.

“From a business standpoint, Cosmo should have the right to do what it wants with its property,” said Ed Pazdur, publisher of Executive Golfer magazine in Irvine.

But James Boccardo, a longtime resident of 17 Mile Drive whose four-acre estate is called Paradise Found, contended that “the course is dedicated to the public by deed restrictions. . . . Pebble Beach was built for the benefit of the public who bought lots in the development, as well as their visitors and the general public.”

Boccardo, a lawyer, took the unusual step of submitting a proposed suit challenging the membership plan to Pebble Beach Co. “to see whether they could come up with a defense.” The company asked to have until July 20 to respond.

“It would be a shame if they made this private,” said Steve Novarro, an Alhambra real estate developer, as he strolled to the Lodge after a recent round. Novarro wonders whether Pebble Beach Co. can stick to its pledge to keep the public playing. “If I were to pay $300,000 to $400,000 for a membership and they told me I couldn’t play because the public was playing, . . . that wouldn’t last long.”