A growing and younger membership at the Harvard and Yale clubs have forced them to renovate, expand their facilities, and seek outside sources of revenue, angering many alumni who think the clubs are losing their charm.

The era of the university club functioning as an exclusive and leisurely gentlemen’s oasis is long over, said Harvard Club of New York president, Joseph Handlin. He said with Harvard’s 12 schools producing more graduates every year – and more graduates living longer – the demand for the club’s facilities is greater than ever. He said the club’s younger members “made very clear” their desire for a world-class gym. “We had to reconstruct the squash courts to comply with international regulations.”

Older alumni wanted an expanded lecture series. Moreover, “everyone wanted more and better dining options and increased meeting space.”

The Harvard Club’s controversial $25 million, 41,000-square-foot expansion was a necessity to meet these demands, he said.

“It seemed like all 11,000 members were not shy about letting us know that they wanted these things.” The addition was completed this spring after a bitter two-year fight in the courts and the press with club members who insisted it would destroy the architectural integrity of the West 44th Street building.

A call to the co-leader of the opposition to the Harvard Club expansion, Manhattan-based real estate developer, Lloyd Zuckerberg, was not returned.

The anger over the Harvard Club expansion and the threatened alumni boycotts have not hurt the club’s bottom line, said a club spokesman, Lonnie Soury. The club earned “between $2 to $3 million” in 2003 on approximately $21 million in revenue, he said.

Membership fees run about $1,200 annually.

The expansion attempted to preserve the Harvard Club’s “older, traditional interior spaces” while addressing the expansion needs, Mr. Handlin said. One regular club member, who was opposed to the expansion, has now accepted it. “It’s over and done with. It’s not as ugly as it looked in the drawings, and they didn’t ruin the insides,” said the member, who asked to remain anonymous.

He said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the club would not make any further changes, adding that the “last straw” would be if they opened the club membership to alumni of other schools, like the Yale Club did with Dartmouth and the University of Virginia.

Such exasperation is most evident at the Yale Club on Vanderbilt Avenue where some of the club’s 9,766 members are still grousing about the furniture replacement – the main lounge’s rugs, brown chairs, and wooden tables were replaced – completed in mid-September.

Several regular club-goers speculate the club renovated its popular Grill Room and Lounge to maximize revenue possibilities from special occasions – especially weddings.

“The club is clearly trying to expand their wedding business. The problem is, they are already doing so many weddings that you can’t go anywhere in the club on the weekend,” said one disgruntled seven-year member, Clay Dean. “And that’s not what the club was chartered to do.” He said the Yale Club’s charter is to operate a club for the benefit of Yale alumni.

Mr. Dean claims he has had “a difficult time” obtaining the Yale Club’s bylaws from its board to press his case for slowing the club’s refurbishment to the broader membership. He said many of his fellow club members are unhappy with the changes in atmosphere and decor.

Moreover, he said the club members were not consulted on the changes, which he described as “tacky” and “out-of-place.” He said the club has recently reached out to him.

“They asked me to join some stupid board which will probably have no real say,” he said. “I suspect this is what they do to anyone who raises a stink.”

Mr. Dean said many longtime members that he spoke to were, for the first time, declining to pay the club’s voluntary $120 capital contribution charge, though he declined to venture a guess as to how many had done so.

Billed quarterly, this surcharge covered more than a quarter of last year’s building-improvement budget of $3.2 million; the budget this year is $2.2 million. A sharp drop in voluntary contributions might get a signal across to management that they have to be more transparent in their dealings with membership, Mr. Dean said.

The Yale Club made $1.4 million in 2003 on almost $23 million in revenue, a slight drop from 2002’s $23.2 million in sales. Annual membership in the club, which is also open to Dartmouth and University of Virginia grads, runs approximately $1,500.

Calls to Yale Club president, Michael Hennessy, and Secretary Katherine Edersheim were not returned.