Newport Council Rejects Balboa Bay Club Project : Expansion: After a wave of residents’ protests, officials vote 4 to 3 to scrap the $60-million plan of the private facility built on public tidelands.

Citing widespread opposition to a $60-million expansion of the posh--and private--Balboa Bay Club on public tidelands, the City Council on Monday night rejected the plan.

In doing so, a council majority halted a public hearing, rejected an emotional request by the club attorney to postpone the vote another two weeks and, in effect, told the club that if it wished to expand it should start over with another plan. The vote was 4 to 3.

“I think the humane thing to do would be to deny it,” explained Council Member Ruthelyn Plummer. “Because if we can continue (the issue to another date), that gives false hope that they can still tinker with their project.”

Plummer, joined by council members Jean Watt, Evelyn Hart and Mayor Phil Sansone, said the massive project was a matter of interest not just to club members and nearby homeowners but to all of Newport Beach.

“These letters and phone calls have come from all over the city,” Plummer said. “If we’re denying it, we’re really telling the Bay Club to go back and do your homework again. . . .”

The expansion would have included a 300-room hotel, two cocktail lounges, a 450-capacity ballroom and a new athletic facility, all for members only.

“A lot of people have expressed real concern about the Bay Club being a private club” on bayfront land leased from the city, Plummer added. When the club began “in 1948, that might have been absolutely proper. But through the years, it has become a commercial venture--a strictly commercial venture hiding behind the skirts of a private club,’ she said.

Sansone said that he has been receiving calls around the city from residents voicing “an almost violent” objection to the project.

They want to know: “Why does it have to be so big? Why can’t they build within their current envelope (zoning)? . . . Why does this have to be a $60-million project?” Sansone said.

“I hope you understand,” he told Balboa Bay Club officials. “It’s not only satisfying Cliff Haven or Bayshores” homeowners’ associations. In a citywide vote, “this would be shot down 7 or 8 to 1.”

The council majority also rejected pleas from Bay Club attorney Dennis O’Neil--and suggestions from two homeowners’ groups--that the vote be postponed at least several weeks so that plans could be modified and scaled down.

An emotional O’Neil warned the council shortly before its vote: “I honestly believe we’ve been denied a fair hearing. We don’t have our consultants here” to hear the debate.

Councilman John Hedges agreed, saying, “I can’t deny a project which has changed. I believe we’re denying the applicant a fair hearing.”

But Hedges and Councilmen Clarence J. Turner and John C. Cox Jr. were outnumbered by their colleagues.

The 42-year-old club, long the haunt of movie stars and politicians, now includes a huge swiming pool, a clubhouse and a 144-unit apartment complex that critics have dubbed “The Great Wall of China.”

Leaders of the homeowner associations vehemently opposed the expansion, arguing that it would create traffic congestion and block waterfront views, and was an improper use for land supposed to be reserved for the public. The club has operated on a tidelands lease that is to expire in 2011.

Balboa Bay Club officials on Friday had offered nearby homeowner associations a new plan that would reduce the height of the project somewhat and, they said, offer improved bay views. William D. Ray, the club’s board chairman, said in a letter to the council Monday that plans could be changed “in the interest of community harmony.” The letter sought a continuance of the hearing.

Club officials argued, and Sansone agreed, that they had never heard “so much disinformation on this project. I don’t think the public really understands this,” the mayor said.

Kevin Green, president of the Bayshores association, said he had met with club officials last week and had been shown slightly changed plans--buildings that were 25 feet high, not 35--which “we could potentially live with.” But Green said: “We’re still up against the wall with the mass and scale” of the entire expansion.