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Balboa Bay Club Tests Waters With Public : Poll: Newport Beach residents say a public relations firm representing the posh resort is seeking input on how expansion plans could be altered.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

No sooner did the Balboa Bay Club’s massive $60-million expansion plan fail to win City Council approval than the club embarked on a quiet public relations campaign to gauge, and perhaps sway, community opinion on the project.

In recent weeks, residents citywide have reported receiving phone solicitations from a public relations consultant representing the posh private club. Additionally, homeowners groups have been asked to meet with the consultant to give a post-mortem about what went wrong with the proposal and how it could be changed to win community approval.

Officials of the company, Irvine-based Thomas Wilck Associates, declined to discuss the poll. Repeated inquiries to Bay Club officials about the survey were referred to Wilck’s office. Thomas Wilck, president of the company, said the poll’s content and purpose may be discussed more fully at a later date.

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Residents, though, are buzzing about the phone calls, which they say begin as questionnaires and then take on a promotional tone about the bay-front development.

“They say they’re taking a survey on this and that,” said C. G. Reynolds, a homeowner on the bluff above the bay overlooking the club. “And then they got around to talking about the Bay Club. And I told them I really don’t have time to talk any more and cut them off.”

Another bluff resident who asked not to be named, said she, too, hung up on the phone solicitor.

“They said they were doing a survey of the area, and asked me what two things about the city I was most dissatisfied with. I told them congestion and overbuilding,” she recalled. “Then they asked me another question, they named the Bay Club, and I got suspicious and said I wasn’t interested.”

Additionally, the heads of the two homeowners groups that spearheaded residential opposition to the project--Bayshores Community Assn. and Cliff Haven Community Assn.--said their groups were recently invited to meetings with the firm.

At those meetings, they said Wilck told group members that the club was seeking their input on how the project could be altered to please nearby residents and what changes could be made to win their approval if there were future attempts to expand.

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“The PR agency is responsible for repositioning (the Bay Club’s) image to repitch the idea to the City Council and the community . . . to see if there was any way they could salvage this thing,” said Alan Beaudette, president of the Cliff Haven Community Assn. “Basically, we told the PR guys they ought to put it on the back burner for a couple of years.”

Residents turned out in unexpected numbers in late July to persuade the City Council to defeat the plan. The council voted 4-3 to reject the bay-front development that would have added a commercially oriented arm to the private, 42-year-old club. The plan included a 300-room hotel, two cocktail lounges, a ballroom and a new athletic facility to expand the existing club that sits on public tidelands leased from the city.

Some residents had opposed the plan, saying it would bring too much traffic and congestion to their communities near the bay. Other residents living farther from the club site questioned further construction on city-owned property that was originally intended to be a park. Some said the plan was too big and that a scaled-back version might be more palatable.

Those supporting the development, including Councilmen John Hedges, Clarence J. Turner and John C. Cox Jr., said the tourist-oriented development would bring the city extra sales tax revenue to expand programs and services. Club officials say the growth would help the club better serve its clientele. Others in favor add that it would help renovate and upgrade the aging club that is something of a symbol of Newport Beach.

The club has not yet indicated whether it will return to the council with a new proposal for the property.

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