Kermit,
It sounds like a great opportunity to organize a unique club event. If the board doesn't agree, invite a few fellow solar eclipse enthusiasts as your guests and enjoy the day.
Our club opens for community outreach events and meetings, and individual members often hold charity, alumni & business events; as well as weddings, private parties and even memorial services. I personally host a management retreat at the club once a year for my company. We have open house events several times per year for member recruitment and have opened the club to the whole harbor a few times on major summer holidays - though I think maybe with mixed results. We have a full time manager and a staff of probably a dozen or so in-season, so we actually kind of
need these events.
Ironicly, there are times when we practically go on lock down. We are in the unusual situation of having a 30k seat outdoor concert venue next door, literally less than fifty feet away. Fences and barricades go up for the major concerts and we have off duty police officers at the doors. We learned the need for such measures with the first major concert a few years ago. Long story short: Jimmy Buffet, nearly 30k people, heavy rain before the concert, flip-flops sucked off in the mud, beer sold in 20oz cans only & no rest room facilities near the exits...... You can guess where a large number of muddy bare foot people headed after the concert.