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New York Post
03-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Why NYC's most exclusive social clubs are hot with investors
Not since the 19th century have New Yorkers been so keen on clubs. Suddenly, everybody who is anybody has joined up with a schmoozy society outlet catering to seemingly every interest and income bracket — from Casa Cipriani for the social set, to the Leash Club for canine parents. Even the old guard along West 44th Street, aka Club Row, as well as other yesteryear organizations like the National Arts Club, Lotos Club and University Club, are attracting fresh faces anew. 'I'm a wonderful guest at most of the city's clubs, but I tend to be drawn to the old-school clubs of New York where you are stepping back in time,' said residential broker Mike Fabbri of the Agency, who lives in Gramercy Park and is joining the nearby National Arts Club. 'After COVID, there's been a resurgence of people wanting to belong and have a community.' 5 Even heritage haunts like the National Arts Clubs are booming. Getty Images for The National Arts Club But it's not just a spirit of bonhomie or overcrowded restaurants that are driving New Yorkers into exclusive sets — it's smart money. Unlike a typical restaurant, bar or gathering space, a membership model allows founders and operators to avoid taxes. That's because social clubs are considered nonprofits, where the Benjamins remain in the club's pockets and fund member benefits. As long as earnings aren't used to the private benefit of any particular person, a club is in the clear per the IRS. Better still, 35% of a social club's revenue can even come from non-member sources, including investment income. But taxes must be paid on up to 15% of the income from non-members who are not a guest of members — i.e. public walk-ins. And there's absolutely nothing on this earth that real estate investors love more than saving on taxes. Financier John Paulson, who recently purchased the storied Princeton Club's defaulted mortgage, told Page Six he may turn it into a place for 'vibrant 20- and 30-year-olds' as 'their place to go.' And no wonder Jeff Klein dropped $130 million to build out the new 'it' club, the San Vicente West Village in the Jane Hotel. 5 The new San Vicente West Village club cost $130 million. Helayne Seidman Initiation costs a reported $3,200 to $15,000 with annual dues of $1,800 to $4,200 depending on age. 'We've gotten a lot of inquiries from social clubs for properties we represent,' said Lee Block of RTL (previously Winick). 'There's a lot of activity for that in the city.' London's celebrity haunt Anabelle's opened in 1963 and has had several iterations. But the founder's son, Robin Brierly, has now collaborated with stateside owners the Reuben Brothers on Maxime's, which opened in March in the former Westbury Hotel at 848 Madison Ave. The Twenty Two, another London-based club, opened late last year in the Reuben Brothers' 16 E. 16th St. in the Flatiron District by Union Square and includes a public restaurant and hotel along with the private club and rooftop nightclubs. Meanwhile, Miami hotspot Casa Tua opened at the new Surrey hotel at 20 E. 76th St. It has an annual fee of $4,300 that rises to $7,000 if you want to visit its other locations in Aspen and Miami (after initiation fees). But the restaurant is open to non-members. 5 It costs $3,400 a year to party at Casa Tua in the Upper East Side. Olga Ginzburg for NY Post 'Casa Tua is the new hot spot,' said Lisa Simonsen, a residential broker with Brown Harris Stevens who belongs to 'a lot' of clubs. 'I join the ones that fit me and my family.' Social clubs hunting for a house have been eyeing 26 Little W. 12th St. in the Meatpacking District, brokers said. 'There's a lot of action on it from various member clubs looking to expand here or coming here from overseas,' said Jared Epstein of Aurora Capital Associates. 'It makes a lot of sense because it looks over the Hudson River.' 5 Thank city real estate players who see private clubs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Chez Margaux as surefire assets with guaranteed revenue. WWD via Getty Images Nearby, Jean-Georges Vongerichten turned his former Spice Market restaurant at 403 W. 13th St. into the elegant Chez Margaux dining club. Fees range from $1,800 to $2,600 annually, depending on age, with an initiation of $1,000 to $2,000. Chez Margaux is not far from where the now publicly traded global Soho House and its celebrity-packed rooftop heated pool became the club du jour when it opened in 2003 at 29-35 Ninth Ave. Fittingly, Vongerichten's partner in the club is developer Michael Cayre of Midtown Equities who bought Soho House from Ron Burkle in 2012. He's also a partner in the luxurious redevelopment of the Lower Manhattan Battery Maritime Building into the private and successful Casa Cipriani. 'If you travel a lot, Soho House has sites globally but it went public and doesn't feel as exclusive and culturally relevant anymore and has lost its luster,' opined Brandon Charnas, a commercial broker with Current Real Estate Advisors. 5 Zero Bond helped prove the club business model to investors. dzobel Charnas rebranded and leased Zero Bond and then helped prominent night club founder Scott Sartiano launch the club during COVID in 2020. Zero Bond's 'no photos' policy helped it become a celebrity haunt for Taylor Swift and Leonardo DiCaprio. Elon Musk threw a party here in 2021, the same year frequent late-night Zero Bond flier, Mayor Eric Adams, held his Election Day night victory party and hosted folks in a VIP room unlocked with a fingerprint scanner. Midtown building owner Craig Deitelzweig of Marx Realty is currently negotiating leases with two different social clubs for his office properties in New York and DC. 'Our buildings have a social club kind of feel and there is a natural gravitation to them by the clubs that adds to the cache of the building,' Deitelzweig said. 'The clubs like buildings that have some heritage and a cool vibe.' 'Being in a real members club is like belonging to a community — it's not selling immediate access but selling relationships.' Brandon Charnas, commercial broker with Current Real Estate Advisors Each of the clubs will have their own restaurant, Deitelzweig said, while the DC club will allow all tenants to use their terrace. 'People love them in the post-COVID world because they want to be social and form their own networks,' he said. Most building owners believe social clubs are a 'solid amenity,' explained Robert Gilman, a CPA with the accounting firm Anchin. For instance, at Hudson Yards, Gilman says ZZ's Club has been 'a standout.' Operated by Major Food Group, in 37 Hudson Yards, its moniker comes from founder Jeff Zalaznick's nickname. It includes a Japanese restaurant, a cigar terrace, a lounge with music programming and has a private location for its restaurant Carbone. The website shows $20,000 for initiation and $10,000 in annual fees. Developer Rabina's hot new residential and office tower in Midtown at 520 Fifth Ave. will also open a five-story social club, Moss, that will have a sauna, a cold plunge pool and a hammam plus spaces for podcasting, dining and events. But the sheer number of new clubs has some in the biz worried. Charnas warns members clubs are swelling into a 'dotcom bubble.' 'Everyone is launching them,' Charnas said. 'Not all of them will survive. They are getting their upfront dues while restaurants are calling themselves 'member clubs.' Being in a real members club is like belonging to a community — it's not selling immediate access but selling relationships.'
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
San Vicente Bungalows Brings FOMO to New York
There was no image of Lady Gaga at 3 a.m., hanging near the wall with various members of Arcade Fire and Eddie Vedder. No images of Kevin Costner, single and ready to mingle by the bar. No images of Cher and Lauryn Hill over at the banquettes of the softly lit dining room. The owners of San Vicente West Village had made sure that no paparazzi could be found inside Jane Street last Friday despite the fact that some of the biggest names in music and Hollywood had come for a party after the Saturday Night Live 50th-anniversary concert at Radio City Music Hall. Had any of those images been beamed across the internet, it might have built a sense that the first event at SVB, which officially opens in March, was a rager for the ages. Perhaps that is the point: You had to be there. Among New Yorkers who flock to power and crave exclusivity, the upcoming opening of Los Angeles's best private club is being greeted with a sense of urgency that is second only to the future of democracy. 'Everyone in fashion has been talking about this club, whether to join, how to get on the list,' said Kendall Werts, a founder of the Jeffries, an agency at the intersection of branding and celebrity. San Vicente West Village is the brainchild of Jeff Klein, a businessman with a long track record in hospitality, who opened San Vicente Bungalows Los Angeles in 2018. In the 1990s, Mr. Klein bet that hotels would be to that decade what nightclubs had been to the 1980s. In 2004, Mr. Klein spent $18 million to buy the dilapidated Sunset Tower Hotel in Los Angeles. It went on to become the town's premier canteen for moguls and movie stars (think: Jennifer Aniston, Jeff Bezos, George Clooney) and, for several years, it was the site of Vanity Fair's famous Oscars party. Mr. Klein also teamed up with the magazine's former editor, Graydon Carter, on The Monkey Bar, a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. But the real follow-up to the Sunset Tower was the San Vicente Bungalows, a members-only club that changed how celebrities could socialize. A cynic might say the idea was to create a safe space for the town's best-known and best-connected people, one where they could gawk at and hit on one another without having those moments memorialized in a bad iPhone picture taken by a tourist. (The club requires all guests to cover their phone cameras with stickers for the duration of their stay.) The challenges associated with navigating Los Angeles's sprawl also worked in the club's favor. With fewer ways to run into people, they settled into picking one. Dues ran around $4,000, not including initiation fees that ranged from $3,000 to $15,000, depending on age. Among those who joined were Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Tom Ford. 'When I'm in L.A, if I'm not eating at home, I'm at San Vicente. Before that, I was at Tower Bar,' Mr. Ford said by phone last week. 'It's like I'm at home. They know my favorite table and what I like. My Coca-Cola arrives before I ask for it. You feel Jeff's presence in every way.' After the coronavirus pandemic, an idea began to gnaw at Mr. Klein: Might he be able to bottle the magic in Los Angeles and bring it back to the city he'd left behind? In short order, he decided to test his luck at the Jane Hotel, a red brick West Village landmark along the West Side Highway. The blowback and intrigue from New Yorkers began as soon as the first invitations to join were extended. A select group of current members were instructed to invite their friends or people who they thought should be members. In emails, those new insiders were given the rare opportunity to join without the formal review process that most members were subjected to. The membership is being vetted by Gabe Doppelt, a British magazine editor who cut her teeth as the assistant to Anna Wintour and Tina Brown. After going on to be the editor of Mademoiselle, she oversaw Hollywood coverage at W magazine and The Daily Beast. People who did not get invites were angry about not being invited. People who did get invites were angry about the fees, especially the older ones and some of the most creative ones who were not high-net-worth individuals. Prospective invitees were asked to upload their drivers licenses so that their age-adjusted fees could be determined. No one liked that. It so happens that San Vicente's annual fees are in the same ballpark as those of other New York City private social clubs, such as Casa Cipriani and Chez Margaux. They're considerably cheaper than the Core Club's. A fair amount of debate began about whether the city had enough juice left to create a lasting clubhouse full of people who were both creative enough and financially solvent enough to pay for membership. Power in New York City is often cultural as much as it is capital. 'Does real fabulousness even take place in public anymore? Isn't it behind closed doors in other people's homes?' said Jon Reinish, a well-connected political consultant who received an invitation to the club last month and had not yet joined. 'I just don't know that it exists in Manhattan anymore the way it did during the days of Michael's the Grill Room and Mortimer's, and it's very hard to reverse-engineer it any kind of lasting way.' But for every person sniping, another was joining. Also helping ensure success: Mr. Klein's unique popularity, according to Kevin Huvane, who, as the co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, helps guide the careers of many San Vicente regulars, among them Ms. Aniston, Demi Moore and Jennifer Lopez. 'People underestimate good will,' he said, before going on to liken Mr. Klein to Joe Allen, the impresario whose restaurants in the theater district established him as a king of Broadway. The night after the star-studded S.N.L. party, Mr. Werts of the Jeffries was among roughly a thousand people who attended a hard-hat party celebrating the club's upcoming opening. Others in the crowd included the power literary agent David Kuhn, the television mogul Darren Starr, the actress Zooey Deschanel and the political pundit Molly Jong-Fast. A magazine editor who earlier in the week had complained to me about having wasted several thousand dollars to join (largely because of FOMO) was now grousing about the long line for the coat check. Even Mr. Klein appeared a little embarrassed by the size of the crowd. A few feet away, he talked to Soon-Yi Previn, the wife of Woody Allen. 'It's a good thing Woody didn't come,' Mr. Klein said. 'It's too crowded.' Officially, Mr. Klein was not participating with this piece. Last December, he gave an interview to The New York Times in connection with the opening of a San Vicente outpost in Santa Monica, Calif. After its publication, Jay-Z asked him why on earth he'd cooperated with it. After all, a central promise of the club is privacy for its members. (Some have been suspended for uploading pictures to Instagram.) And Mr. Klein had to concede that Jay-Z had a point. Still, he also knew that in a town of journalists, nothing about the weekend was going to be totally off the record. And with opening costs in the $130 million range, he was not going to be able to make that back without some press. ('Oof, that's a lot of money,' said Mr. Huvane, when told the number). So Mr. Klein did not exactly shoo me away as he greeted Risa Heller, a crisis manager whose clients have included Jeff Zucker and Anthony Weiner. Waiters marched around the space serving crispy shrimp satays and cappuccino-flavored macaroons. Ms. Jong Fast and Ms. Deschanel went upstairs to see the movie theater, then checked out a few of the guest suites, where the hardwood floors had an amber hue and the bed linens were airy and white. 'This would be a great place to cheat on your spouse,' said Ms. Jong-Fast, stopping for a minute to admire a pumpkin-colored sofa with a Hudson County vibe. 'Although maybe that's more Casa Cipriani.'
