A Bash for Cash : Charity: Groups that depend on philanthropy are turning to non-traditional fund-raisers, such as a tour of a mansion in Palos Verdes Estates. The ‘Designer Showcase’ is expected to raise $250,000 for a hospital.

The “wow room” is how one volunteer docent has taken to describing the palatial entry hall of Villa Montemare, a colossal mansion in Palos Verdes Estates.

That is because she has watched dozens of guests freeze at the threshold, their jaws dropping as they absorb the two-story expanse of black marble and lemon-tinted paint, the twin marble staircases, the skylights, the glittering chandelier.

“This is room No. 1, one of 27, covering 15,000 square feet,” docent Cathy Barr rattles off to each visitor.

“Wow,” retorts one woman, right on cue.

That note of awe, that fascination with opulence, has propelled thousands of guests through Villa Montemare this month as part of “Designer Showcase,” a major fund-raising project for Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance.

The event, which began Oct. 5 and concludes this afternoon, is expected to raise $250,000 for Little Company’s charity programs and its women’s radiological diagnostic services.

The tour has also managed to catch the public’s imagination, which is of critical import for nonprofit hospital foundations and other groups that depend in part on philanthropy. As of last Sunday, 7,856 people had visited the house. And the crowds have been getting bigger each week.

Many Southern California hospitals are finding new ways to supplement the time-honored fund-raising staples--the black-tie balls, the mailed appeals, the golf tournaments.

“People are getting more creative about the type of events that they’re doing,” said Ann Thompson-Haas, regional director of the Assn. for Health-Care Philanthropy.

Said David Langness, spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California: “Many people have said they’re burnt out on the same old traditional fund-raising.”

So in the South Bay, the charity balls have been accompanied in recent years by a viewing of 50 designer Christmas trees to benefit Torrance Memorial Medical Center, a country and Western hoedown to support hospice services at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, and a beach volleyball tournament--complete with a nuns’ team--to aid the Daniel Freeman hospitals in Inglewood and Marina Del Rey.

The “Designer Showcase” in the mansion high atop the Palos Verdes Peninsula is one of the most eye-catching--and complex--of such events.

The family that owns the Italian-style villa agreed to move to another house for more than four months to make way for the fund-raiser, which has involved the complete redecoration of the home. But visitors do not learn the owners’ names. Citing security concerns, the hospital will not identify them, describing them simply as a family with three children, all of whom attend Palos Verdes public schools.

After the family left July 1, a small cavalry of 28 designers arrived--bearing fabrics, furniture and paintings--with each design firm taking on a separate room or area. A painting company donated paint, and painters donated their labor.

The arrangement benefits all involved, said Peggy Lanigan, manager of annual programs for Little Company of Mary Hospital Foundation. The designers donate their services, and, in return, get to expose their names and work to thousands of visitors.

The family, meanwhile, receives free painting and design expertise, and can purchase furnishings used in the house at a reduced price. In short, they are able to redecorate their home for about one-third the regular cost, Lanigan said.

The hospital receives the proceeds from the $15 admission price to the house and from an opening party, a closing gala, other activities and related donations from businesses and individuals.

Tours are scheduled to continue through 4 p.m. today at the house, at 1661 Lower Paseo La Cresta. Tickets are available at the door.

On a recent morning, guests paused outside to pull thin blue protective booties over their shoes so they wouldn’t scuff the marble floors while wandering from room to room. They gawked at the towering fireplaces, the sunken marble bathtub with the ocean view, the exercise room, the projection room.

The granite-floored kitchen has four ovens, two dishwashers, eight electric burners, four gas burners, and built-in, labeled compartments for 18 styles of pasta, from fusilli to tortellini.

“Whew!” said one woman as she spotted the pasta display.

Some visitors had to think hard when asked if they could imagine living amid such opulence.

“Maybe. With a lot of help. It’s a castle,” said Debbie Flachner of Rancho Palos Verdes.

“With minor changes, probably,” said Sandi Larsen of Rancho Palos Verdes, surveying the five-room master bath suite with its private sauna, cavernous dressing rooms and Waterford crystal. “I could live with it. I could live with it.”

“It’s too large, as far as I’m concerned,” said Bill Mulligan of Rancho Palos Verdes, who joked he would have to don deck shoes to maneuver the slick marble floors.

Although events like the Designer Showcase are big moneymakers, they require enormous amounts of organizing.

Planning for the Villa Montemare tour began in January, and 300 volunteers a week are needed while the house is on display. Then there is the legal agreement with the house’s owners, the insurance, the catalogue.

“When you raise the level of a fund-raiser to a certain point, you can’t go backward. It used to be, we did sketches of the rooms in a black-and-white catalogue,” Lanigan said. This year, the thick catalogue features full-color photographs.

Despite the exhaustive work required, planners are already searching for a Designer Showcase house for 1995. The key, they say, is to turn such special events into “friend raisers,” building up a base of new volunteers, who in turn may become hospital donors.

“You don’t do them, really, just to make money,” said Mary Anne Bendixen, corporate vice president of the Daniel Freeman Hospitals Foundation. “You do them because you want to get people involved in your organization. To get involved, and stay involved.”

So planners keep searching for new ideas, new approaches, even new invitation designs that will stand out in the mailboxes of people accustomed to getting a dozen or more such invitations each week.

And some do stand out.

Take the invitation issued this fall by a fund-raising group at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte. It asked people to attend an Oct. 14 “non-luncheon” at $50 per person.

“You benefit because you won’t have to dress up, you won’t have parking problems, you won’t have to endure long speeches and hotel food,” the invitation explained.

The luncheon, which did not take place, raised $8,000.