New Private Club Welcomes Women, Minority Members

In an era where clubs dominated by white males are increasingly under legal and political attack, a new upstart in downtown Los Angeles touts itself as a little United Nations among private clubs.

The newcomer is City Club of Bunker Hill, housed on the 54th and highest floor of Wells Fargo Center on Bunker Hill.

From the club’s inception, organizer Rob Maguire of Maguire Thomas Partners, which built the complex, set out to include what he and club manager Patrick Tombelaine believe is “the new leadership of downtown”--executives of both sexes and all races and ethnic groups, including foreign nationals.

“As our neighbors were battling in court, we were accepting without question,” Tombelaine said.

For a $4,000 initiation fee and $110-a-month dues plus prompt payment of dining bills, a maximum of 800 chief executive officers, senior partners and other top executives can host meals, bar mitzvahs, weddings, Christmas parties or business meetings in the club’s lavish quarters.

What is different about the City Club is that it was founded on the non-discriminatory concept fought for years by traditionally all-male organizations such as the neighboring California and Jonathan clubs.

“It had to do with what our perspective of Los Angeles is all about today,” said Walter F. Beran, the club’s founding board chairman who is with the accounting firm Ernst & Young. “If you walk down the streets, you discover this is certainly a multiracial, multi-ethnic city.

“It reminds me of the ancient water hole where all animals of various shapes and colors come together,” he said. “That is how I think of this club--a place for all to come together.”

The club opened its doors last June, two full years after the city of Los Angeles enacted an ordinance banning discrimination against women and minorities by private clubs. In that sense, its open-door policy might seem unremarkable. But it came at a time when other private clubs remained locked in legal battles over the changing attitudes.

In Los Angeles, most of the turmoil involved the nearby 1,275-member California Club and the 3,700-member Jonathan Club, whose reluctance to welcome women and minorities prompted passage of the anti-discrimination ordinance. The clubs--both of which have been in existence for about a century--have consistently denied any discrimination and have recently begun admitting some women and minorities.

As recently as 1987, however, the Jonathan Club claimed in a federal lawsuit that the new ordinance is “unconstitutional as it is being applied to the club because the club is a purely private institution.” A federal judge threw the case out last September, leaving the matter in the state courts, where the city ordinance had been upheld.

In January, 1988, the city attorney’s office sued the club, charging that its bar and grill excluded women in violation of both the city ordinance and the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. City Atty. James K. Hahn dropped that suit Nov. 9, saying the club had voluntarily admitted women to its second-floor bar and grill and changed its name from Men’s Grill to the Second Floor Grill and Tap Room.

“While the California and Jonathan clubs have opened their doors--and I applaud them for that--the forces move slowly there,” said City Club founder Beran, who also holds a membership in the California Club. “If we show an imbalance (at City Club), we try hard to balance it. We are not always perfect, but we work at it.”

Kevin T. Ryan, the deputy city attorney who handled the city’s case against the Jonathan Club, said that while he expects clubs to comply with the anti-discrimination ordinance, “occasionally some persons are narrow minded, and we are happy to see that (the City Club) is not falling into that group.”

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, which has waged several anti-discrimination campaigns against various private clubs, called the City Club’s recruiting efforts “wonderful” and said she “absolutely applaud(ed)” them.

“Those are the kind of efforts that all institutions trying successfully to integrate, whether with gender or race, should attempt,” she said. “It is so much more efficient, less costly in the long run, and (integration) happens so much sooner if it happens that way instead of waiting for the courts to act.”

Despite such praise, the new club’s membership is largely white and male although much less so than its more-established counterparts.

With 743 of the 800 membership slots already filled, Tombelaine said women account for about 17% of club members and about 8% are black. Club officials said they do not specifically track ethnicity of members.

By comparison, last month’s figures for the Jonathan Club show that fewer than 100 of its 3,700 members are women--or about 3%. The California Club, which declined to answer repeated inquiries about its membership, also has only a comparative handful of women members, according to recent reports.

In the case of the new City Club, officials say cost bars many and qualifications, such as education and professional accomplishment, exclude others.

“There are not that many women at the corporate level yet, and if there are, we don’t know where they are,” said Mary Howell, membership manager, explaining the recruitment problem for City Club.

Tombelaine also speculated that “the new executive woman seems to be more aggressive than her male counterpart so I don’t know if they take as much leisure time as men.”

Tombelaine described a typical City Club member as “45 to 55, successful in his career on the level of a CEO, senior partner or managing partner of a law or accounting firm, an entrepreneur, civic leader, an owner, aggressive, demanding, educated, well-traveled, sophisticated person who definitely knows what he wants.”

“You have to reach a point in your profession and society to have the financial means, whether it is your own money or one of the perks from your company,” Tombelaine said. “But the money is a very small part of it. It is self-accomplishment. You have to fit the mold or demographics of the membership. It is still membership by invitation only.”

He said no “black-balling” occurs, but a membership committee does screen prospective members through nominations by other members.

“If you are (mass murderer) Charles Manson, I don’t care how many nominations you have, you are not going to get in,” he said. “So there is discrimination of sorts.”

Even so, Sue Laris, publisher of the Downtown News, said the City Club’s aggressive pursuit of women and minorities enticed her to accept an invitation for a seat on the club’s founding Board of Governors.

“I thought it was very refreshing to start with that point of view,” she said. “I like start-up operations that get it right, rather than fix-it measures later.”

Donald Bailey, a black, retired Los Angeles policeman who owns McDonald’s franchises at the Wells Fargo Center and the Museum of Science and Industry, agreed to serve on the club’s eight-member executive committee for similar reasons.

“I have read a lot about the other clubs like the Jonathan and California clubs, and I had a bad taste because of what I have read of the position they have taken in the past against minorities,” Bailey said. “But the City Club is most welcoming and very sincere about making it a club for everyone.”

The polyglot membership has also created some problems for Tombelaine and his staff of 65.

“I have read four different books now on Japanese and Chinese customs,” Tombelaine said. “We learn how to bow . . . and how to serve, which is basically in silence, and never to offer a wine list if it’s a purely business lunch.”

References to Christmas are changed to holidays to avoid offending Jewish members, he said, adding, “If someone is having a bar mitzvah during Christmas, you make darn sure there is not a Christmas tree in that room.”

So far, the City Club’s aggressive recruiting efforts have not drained business from its older counterparts, officials at the Jonathan and California clubs said. Both point proudly to waiting lists for memberships and different services they provide that City Club cannot, including sports facilities and overnight accommodations.

“This city is so big, there is room for so many different clubs,” said a California Club spokesman. “And those people would not necessarily walk down our way.”

Gary W. Hankins, president of the Jonathan Club, said, “I think it (City Club) is more of a business lunch club, and we are a private social club.”

“I don’t think it has hurt us competitively,” he said of City Club’s recruiting of all races and genders.

“At the Jonathan Club we are not prejudiced. We don’t discriminate in any way, so I don’t think that their anti-discrimination posture is any different than ours.”

City Club members are automatically associated with 175 reciprocal clubs scattered from New York to Kuala Lumpur because all are managed by Club Corp. of America. A Los Angeles member can entertain guests at any associated club and be billed at home.

Tombelaine said social events, charity fund-raisers and speakers’ forums are becoming a part of the new club, even though some members plan to visit its two main dining rooms or reserve its five private dining rooms only for business meals.

“We want to become very involved in the growth of downtown Los Angeles, with the arts and civic organizations,” he said. “We want to allow diversified groups a forum where they can debate developments . . . in air quality, residential development, transportation.”