May 14, 2003 - NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--If all goes as planned today, the new Balboa Bay Club & Resort will skillfully blend a new luxury hotel and the renovated private club that has carried the Balboa Bay Club name for 55 years. 

Valet drivers will welcome the public for the first time since the Navy vacated the property in 1948 and developers began turning it into one of Orange County's most popular gathering spots, a place where the motto "friends, family and fun" has endured through generations. 

It took 14 years of planning, negotiations with nearby homeowners and planning commissions, and 2 1/2 years of construction. The end result is a 132-room hotel and $65 million renovation project that becomes the third new coastal resort to open in Orange County this year. 

But the hardest part of adding this piece to the Orange Coast Riviera, says owner Beverly Ray, was preserving the lifestyle that club members have grown to treasure while she modernized a deteriorating facility and carried out the vision her late husband Bill had for expanding the property. 

Tourists and corporate types are creeping into a waterfront resort that, at its core, is a beach club where the wealthy members cling to tradition like they cling to family albums. 

Ray thinks she and her team will be able to accommodate both sets of guests if they get first-rate service as they share the facility. The club has a separate entry and members have unique privileges, while the hotel has a full-service restaurant and access to the spa and fitness center that sits on the club side, for a daily fee. 

With queen palms and bougainvillea gracing the Italian Mediterranean-style buildings, and the harbor glistening from its balconies, the property was designed to be beautiful and flexible enough to offer something for everyone. Members and weekend hotel guests. Meeting planners and party planners. Socialites and sailors. 

"There was a lot of doubt and fear about changing the status quo, and we made a lot of changes," she said, in a Texas drawl. "It's not easy to change because people at the Bay Club stay here forever. They get Bay Club fever and it can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing, too, if they become complacent. 

"The place had taken a lot of hard use over the years. To have this real beautiful place now, it's a real treat for those who had to make do all these years." 

The renovation lifted and tucked the old, revitalizing the private club while giving birth to a hotel that can cater to a new era of celebrities. 

The old club served as a retreat for John Wayne, Greta Garbo, Ronald Reagan and others who appreciated its low-key version of luxury. The hotel already has meetings booked for two major entertainment studios. 

The resort has the spa, the grand ballroom and the pillow-top mattresses that all luxury hotels have today, but it has incorporated its unique 55-year history. The lounge is called "Duke's Place" and it features sepia-toned photos of Wayne, the legendary actor and club governor. In his honor, a tequila-based drink called "Duke's Favorite" is on the menu. 

The hotel restaurant keeps the nautical feel of the club with the name, "First Cabin." Members have access to it and their own private restaurant on the second floor of the hotel. 

The property's 128 high-end apartments, rented for summer and annual use, were unchanged. 

Ray's goal now is to build club membership, estimated at 3,000. It has lagged in recent years and grown steadily older. Initiation fees range from $6,000 to $15,000, with $200 monthly dues. 

The staff is another blend of old and new. Nearly 300 new employees were hired this year to join the existing 200, many who have been at the club for 10 years or more. On their final day of training, they were encouraged to consider themselves not only cooks and housekeepers, but ambassadors for a place where service has meant long-term success. 

"Success at the BBC is making people feel good," President Henry Schielein told them. "It doesn't take a Ph.D. to do this, but it takes a desire to be friendly and a desire to work hard." Schielein should know. He has worked in the hotel business for 54 years, starting as a teenager and working his way into the Ritz Cartlon chain. He joined the BBC team in 1994 in a sweeping management change, and has made it clear that he expects the Bay Club to earn Five-Star and Five-Diamond ratings just the way the Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel did when he was there. 

Fewer than 3 percent of all hotels earn a Four-Diamond rating from the Automobile Club, says Clarence Garlough, a consultant and former AAA inspector. And only a sliver of those -- .002 percent of all hotels -- hit the Five-Diamond stratosphere. Three in Orange County hit the mark last year, including the Four Seasons Newport Beach. 

The staff at the Balboa Bay Club has been trained to pursue that level of service. It's what the other two luxury hotels that opened in OC this year, the Montage in Laguna Beach and the the Huntington Beach Hyatt Resort & Spa, are striving for. 

The Bay Club's decor is casual elegance, with plantation-style cane furniture and tropical-print fabrics in the room. The Grand Ballroom features a 22-foot wide beaded crystal chandelier and a mixture of the hotel's colors ?. from sand-colored tile pavers in the courtyard to a brilliant rust hues that nearly match Ray's striking hair. 

"I wanted it to be special and memorable, but homelike," she said. 

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(c) 2003, The Orange County Register, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.