Penn Club trying to lure U. faculty, staff

The days of the stuffy, smoke-filled Ivy League alumni clubs are over. With the opening of the Penn Club on June 1, University alumni of all ages will finally have a place to call their own in midtown Manhattan. A new campaign aimed at University faculty and staff is trying to welcome them to the Penn Club, too. The club kicked-off a faculty and staff membership drive this week, offering faculty and staff a specially discounted annual membership rate of $120 per year. The club's Membership Marketing Manager, Rachel Spasser, said the most inexpensive annual dues are $100 for alumni aged 21-24 who live outside a 50-mile radius of New York City. Membership dues are also scaled to encourage the younger alumni from out-of-town. Spasser said the club's drive to attract a young crowd, in addition to older alumni, has been very successful. "The under-35 category represents about 50 percent or more of those people who have already signed up at this point," Spasser said. The usually apathetic 21-24 demographic has expressed more interest than expected, she added. "This has been the most responsive group," Spasser said. "They still have strong feelings about Penn and about tradition," she added. Any alumni over 35-years-old who lives in New York City can expect to pay $860 for an annual membership, said Spasser, a 1989 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. Faculty and staff members who sign up to become Penn Club members will receive the same privileges at the club that alumni have. The Penn Club provides members with a health club, banquet rooms, overnight guest rooms available at reasonable rates, conference rooms and a bar and grille. "The grille room will be the New York version of Smokey Joe's," said Penn Club President and 1960 University graduate Lynne Tarnopol. The general membership drive that started homecoming weekend has so far attracted some 3,000 new members. "We hope that these efforts can be completed by the end of 1994," Spasser said. "We're right on target with our numbers so far," Tarnopol added. The Penn Club is situated at 30 West 44th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and sits directly across the street from the Harvard Club on "Clubhouse Row." The clubhouse will also house the University's New York Regional Office and Wharton School Club. "This is really an amazing thing to have," Spasser said. "In terms of the decor, its attitude and the intended programming, the Club's definitely aimed at a younger group, both men and women." The clubhouse has undergone extensive remodeling and renovations. "We gutted almost every single thing in the building," Tarnopol said. "We even added another whole story." As fundraising efforts continue, more than $16 million has been pledged by alumni, parents and friends to finance the three-year, $25 million renovation of the clubhouse. Tarnopol said the Penn Club also has to pay back the purchase price of the property, $15 million, to the University. Spasser said the clubhouse will be inhabitable in May, well before the Penn Club opens for normal use to all members on June 15.