(Bloomberg) -- When the Core club reopens its doors for power lunches and power cocktails and power workouts in a new location on Fifth Avenue, it will face more competition than ever before.
A new class of members-only clubhouses has cropped up in the past two years, already tweaking the way New York's rich eat, play, and work. The revamped Core will join a field that includes Casa Cipriani, Zero Bond, three outposts of the Soho House empire, and an Aman Club, which will open a block away from Core in Midtown.
This band of upstarts is loosely modeled on the city's longtime members' clubs, which were founded in the 19th century in the style of a British gentleman's club. New Yorkers, after all, also enjoyed reading a paper by the fire, meeting friends for lunch, conducting brief, collegial business deals over Scotch, and partaking in boozy, boisterous dinners served by waiters in uniform.
But whereas the Metropolitan, University, Union, and Knickerbocker clubs share the same imposing facades, wood-paneled libraries, and inedible food as their London forebears, Core and its peers are aiming for something different. They're not stodgy institutions populated by blazer-wearing octogenarians speaking in murmurs; they're sleek social hubs offering top-quality dining, vibrant nightlife, state-of-the-art gyms, wellness centers, and year-round cultural programming.
All of that is attractive but also not exactly hard to come by in New York, a city nearly buckling under the weight of its gyms, restaurants, nightlife venues, and theaters. If the allure of the old membership clubs was simple—exclusivity combined with an aversion to the crushing, carpeted silence of domestic life—the appeal of these clubs is more layered.
A few, such as Zero Bond, have just a single location that primarily offers members something to do while they're in town. Although it and its downtown counterpart Casa Cipriani were planned pre-pandemic, they opened in a city where residents who couldn't travel were faced with vastly diminished options for going out.
They've both become places to see and be seen, and are already carrying the torch for Eric Adams, New York's new, nightlife-loving mayor. (The night after he won, he celebrated at Zero Bond.) But Core, which is soon opening outposts in San Francisco and Milan, has set its sights on the Soho House model, aiming to capture and serve a more itinerant demographic.
In a way, Core and Soho House address an age-old need: helping traveling businesspeople get plugged into a local network. It's at least partially why Anglo-Saxon social clubs became so successful in the first place. “They were particularly attractive for migrants and newcomers to the city,” says Peter Clark, a professor emeritus of European urban history at the University of Helsinki and the author of British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World. The point of many clubs, he says, was to serve as “an important foothold in the social life of the communities they're joining.”
In that scenario, a man arrives at a club in, say, 18th century Boston with proof of membership from its branch in London and is welcomed with open arms. “It gave a newcomer economic and financial credibility, as well as social standing,” Clark says. Core could be seen in a similar light—a friendly entry point for an international social and professional class eager to find its footing in a safe space with like-minded people.
Whereas about 60% of the single-venue Casa Cipriani's 2,300 members are from New York, according to a club representative, at Core, “our members have always been international,” says its founder, Jennie Enterprise. Of its 1,500 members, only 30% are locals.
Founded in 2005, the club has an initiation fee that ranges from $15,000 to $100,000 and annual dues that range from $15,000 to $18,000. Originally located on East 55th Street, it announced during the pandemic that it would be moving to what was formerly known as the Coca-Cola building on Fifth Avenue.
The space, set to open in September, will occupy the building's top four floors and span about 60,000 square feet. Touring the interior on a recent winter afternoon, Enterprise, energetic and undeterred by the city's recent surge in Covid-19 cases, outlines a mission surprisingly close to its forebears'. “We encourage our members to conduct the business of their lives at Core,” she says.
Core: New York will include 11 hotel-style suites, five private meeting rooms, a spa, gym, beauty salon, health bar, theater, library, two dining rooms, and something called the Dangene Institute, a service founded by Enterprise's wife that handles what Enterprise describes as “noninvasive, nonsurgical kinds of age-optimization, longevity, and just imperfections, generally.”
Core has plans to open a Milan outpost in December, which will inhabit 40,000 square feet within an historic building on the Corso Giacomo Matteotti. “We have the entire palazzo,” Enterprise says. “Tallest bell tower in all of Milano, with cascading terraces and a courtyard behind.” A third location, a 45,000-square-foot branch in San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid, is scheduled to open in 2023.
The three cities, she explains, “are gateway cities, cities that we feel are internationally vibrant and culturally relevant.” The Core member, as Enterprise envisions it, is already traveling between Milan, New York, and San Francisco; she's simply providing an enhanced way for them to do so.
But so are Enterprise's peers, most notably the much cheaper Soho House, which has branches in many more cities, including Chicago, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. The Aman Club, an outgrowth of the cult luxury hotel chain's global loyalty program, will soon have private spaces in Miami, Bangkok, and elsewhere.
And because of Covid, these locations' normal clientele isn't traveling nearly as often, meaning the competition for people (and wallets) is even stiffer.
Enterprise is undaunted. If anything, she says, the pandemic is responsible for the rise in members-only spaces. “One of the reasons why there is a proliferation of private clubs is perhaps because there is this feeling that people want to be in a safer, more secure environment,” she says. Enterprise envisions the Core member joining multiple clubs rather than sticking with just one.
“What is interesting about clubs, no matter how many there are, is that people can identify with how those communities are being developed,” she says. Zero Bond might find adherents for its buzzy nightlife; Dumbo House, for its weekend lounge scene. Core, in Enterprise's vision, will always remain its members' focal point, a safe berth on their endless march between Centurion Lounges and conference rooms.
“I've often thought,” she says, “if every single one of our members is changing the world in their own way, imagine what can happen when we bring everybody together?”
The Members' Club Breakdown
Aman Club
Members: Undisclosed number, though a rep says there's already a waiting list
Initiation fee: $100,000
Annual dues: $15,000
Located in the Crown Building, just a block south of Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue, the club is part of a soon-to-open Aman resort—the first in New York from the ultraluxury hotel chain. The space includes a cigar club and private wine library, but its real draws are specialized services and access to amenities at other branches of the group.
Zero Bond
Members: Undisclosed number
Initiation fee: $1,000
Annual dues: $3,000
Putting the “club” in members club, this moody space built into the former Brooks Brothers headquarters in NoHo puts an emphasis on late nights and celebrity culture. Launched by nightlife impresario Scott Sartiano of 1 Oak, the club has Kim Kardashian, Liev Schreiber, and Tom Brady as members.
Casa Cipriani
Members: About 2,300
Initiation fee: $2,000
Annual dues: $3,900
Main draws: The part-hotel, part-club in the historic Battery Maritime Building at the foot of Manhattan showcases exquisite wood and marble details throughout. The restaurant features views of New York Harbor, and the 15,000-square-foot spa offers everything from reflexology to cryotherapy.
Soho House
Members: 145,000, as of November 2021
Initiation fee: About $700
Annual dues: From about $2,500 to $4,000
The global powerhouse among the business-meets-pleasure set, Soho House offers three buzzy options: the original Meatpacking District location, with its crowded as-seen-on-Sex and the City rooftop pool; the cozy and flirty Ludlow House on the Lower East Side; and Brooklyn's Dumbo House, offering postcard views from its restaurant and outdoor pool.
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