For decades, New York’s private clubs were synonymous with wood-paneled dining rooms, academic affiliations and strict dress codes. Stuffy buttoned-up Midtown enclaves like the Penn Club, Harvard Club and Yale Club functioned more as after-hours boardrooms than places to meet up with friends for drinks.
That changed in 2003, when London-based social club Soho House crossed the Atlantic, opening its first U.S. location in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The club signed a lease for 45,000 square feet at the brick loft building at 29 Ninth Avenue, kicking off a new era of private spaces that were hip and exclusive.
Today, the city is awash in clubs, from stalwarts like Zero Bond and Casa Cipriani, to ZZ’s Member Club from Major Food Group, and the newest entrants such as Moss and Flyfish Club. They’re cropping up in office buildings, hotels and condo towers, adding cachet and amenity value for landlords. At the same time, family-oriented concepts like The Beginning Clubhouse and Kings Athletic Club are slated to open in vacant properties in Brooklyn, filling less desirable spaces and branding themselves as urban country clubs.
Brokers are now tracking more than three dozen private clubs operating or in development across the five boroughs. To landlords and dealmakers, the trend has produced one of the most compelling tenant classes in the post-pandemic real estate reset.
“I think landlords understand the importance of these clubs and how it’ll help them potentially in the leaseability of the asset for cool brands that want an element of cachet or want an element of cool to offer their employees or their clients,” broker Brandon Singer of Retail by MONA said.
But to doubters, the sheer volume signals oversaturation. Private clubs typically lock in long-term leases, offering landlords steady rent but little flexibility. If the membership fails to materialize, those cavernous, custom-built spaces can go dark, leaving both club operators and property owners exposed.
“I think when you have too many that are opening, it’s creating a problem,” Singer said. “I don’t care how much money you make, there’s only so many people that can afford that [membership]. So I think you will see a thinning out.”
From nightlife to asset class
The current private-club boom can be traced, in part, to Zero Bond, a former Brooks Brothers factory at 670 Broadway that helped rewrite the playbook for post-pandemic hospitality.
When Brandon Charnas first encountered the struggling loft building, he was a corporate lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis. But Charnas saw an opportunity. He connected the building’s owner with Paramount Group, whose chief investment officer happened to be a college friend from Penn. In 2015, Charnas brokered the sale of the nearly vacant building to Paramount for $112 million.
That move set Charnas’s next deal in motion: persuading Scott Sartiano, newly untethered after selling his nightlife business, to consider the space for a members-only club. He also had to win over Paramount Group.
“This was before [the] wave of clubs,” Charnas said. ”They had no idea what it was going to be, and they didn’t understand it.”
Brokers are now tracking more than three dozen private clubs operating or in development across the five boroughs.
Charnas managed to get approval from the city’s Department of Buildings to change the address of the five-story landmarked property to 0 Bond. After Charnas secured a liquor license, Sartiano inked a 15-year, 20,000-square-foot lease across three floors of the office building. Asking rent was more than $100 per foot.
“We got the lease done because we got the liquor license, and it all made sense,” said Charnas, who co-founded Current Real Estate Advisors in 2018.
The club debuted in October 2020, when Covid restrictions were loosening, only to close weeks later amid new pandemic rules. It reopened in February 2021, just as the city began to loosen its grip. Since then, it has drawn a Who’s Who of big names, including Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber and Eric Adams. Zero Bond quickly became a textbook example of how a private club could anchor a building and boost its prestige. It’s “just grown to this amazing place,” Charnas said.
As Zero Bond made its mark, other would-be private club proprietors raced to find pandemic-era deals.
“There were a lot of vacant spaces, rents were cheap, so a lot of these clubs swooped in and signed leases,” Singer said.
Venue of their own
Private clubs hit a sweet spot for landlords. They typically sign 10- to 20-year leases, often with extension options. Buildouts are expensive and bespoke, which discourages early exits. Unlike restaurants, clubs generate upfront capital through initiation fees and recurring revenue through regular dues. Landlords frequently contribute to private club buildouts through tenant improvement allowances, rent credits or extended free-rent periods.
“I work on a lot of these types of deals, and the best ones are where there’s mutual alignment with the business plan between the landlord and the tenant,” attorney Shaun Pappas of Starr Associates said. “The landlord becomes almost a partner.”
A private club in an office or residential building also functions as a built-in amenity that helps landlords lease the rest of the building. Moss, which recently opened across five floors at Rabina’s new supertall condo and office tower 520 Fifth Avenue, was conceived to add to the building’s broader value proposition. Pappas negotiated the 40,000-square-foot deal on behalf of the landlord. Both declined to discuss the terms of the lease.
“As part of that development, [Rabina] had this member-club idea that’s offered not only for residents, but also to the public,” Pappas said. “It’s offering a little bit more than just a restaurant. It has amenities — a pool and gym and spa and all those things.” He figures it’ll be well-used in the neighborhood, by both workers and residents.
Brokers themselves patronize clubs as dealmaking venues. Last summer, Pappas brought together three of his real estate developer clients for dinner and drinks on the terrace at Casa Cipriani, one of the three private clubs he belongs to. The setting bred conviviality even though the clients hadn’t previously met.
“I thought it would be nice for them to get together to talk about war stories,” Pappas said. “That type of thing overlooking the East River on a nice Tuesday night at 7 o’clock while the sun sets is a pretty awesome experience.”
Membership also means avoiding the scramble of booking a table at the right restaurant.
“It’s so impossible to even get reservations these days, right?” he added.
Leasing versus owning
New York’s private club boom is partly about filling a post-pandemic gap for “third places,” gathering spots that are neither work nor home. Modern clubs double as coworking spaces, social lounges, dining rooms, wellness hubs and networking spots.
“That element coming out of Covid of finding alternative safe spaces to congregate and socialize — there is a continued desire to find third spaces to kind of solve this trend of loneliness,” CBRE’s Aylin Gucalp said.
Clubs are growing more niche in an effort to stand out to potential members.
In Brooklyn, a wave of family-friendly clubs is cornering the borough’s kid-packed neighborhoods. Little Big Hospitality is transforming an empty office building at 50 Columbia Heights into The Beginning Clubhouse, a seven-story space with a rooftop pizzeria, screening room, bowling alley and indoor jungle gym. Nearby, Kings Athletic Club will open in Brooklyn Heights with a mix of wellness and hospitality amenities for families.
“What they wanted to do was marry what everybody knows as that sort of private club scene and setting in a family-oriented environment,” Newmark broker Peter Whitenack said. He represented landlord CIM Group at 50 Columbia Heights. “It’s not just a place where adults are going to go and drop the kids off and have me-time upstairs. There’s interaction with the kids and there’s programming and movie nights.”
But such specialized branding and build-outs can be expensive. While landlords love clubs right now, the clubs themselves don’t have much leverage when leases come up for renewal, said Bob Knakal of commercial brokerage BKREA.
“After investing all that and having a location become known as ‘the place,’ the landlord would really have you [the tenant] in a pickle if you were doing great and your lease came up and they want to triple or quadruple the rent,” Knakal said.
BKREA is negotiating a deal for a private club planning to expand into New York from another location, Knakal said. The firm is also marketing the former Friars Club building, at 57 East 55th Street, which reverted to the lender in 2025 after the owner defaulted on a $13 million loan. BKREA has received multiple proposals for another private club that wants to buy the property.
“We have several folks we talked to that own these clubs that have leased space,” Knakal said. They wished they’d bought instead, they tell him.
A crowded field
Sky-high dues and a flood of new clubs may be pushing the world behind the velvet rope toward a reckoning.
At Zero Bond, annual dues range from $2,750 to $4,400, depending on a member’s age, and are on top of a $750 to $5,000 initiation fee also depending on age, according to the club’s website. Casa Cipriani charges a $2,000 initiation fee plus annual dues of about $3,900, though prices vary. The ultra-exclusive Aman Club requires $15,000 in yearly dues, plus a staggering $200,000 initiation fee.
Meanwhile, new clubs keep pulling members away from more established spots, in a constant shifting of the social landscape.
“Basically, you’re going to one place now and then in a year, that place is yesterday’s news,” said Singer, who belongs to Colette, the private club on the 37th floor of the GM Building.
Singer often pops into Coco’s at Colette from his nearby office for breakfast, lunch or meetings, so he’s still riding the trend, even if it’s not forever.
“The best of the best will last and stick around,” he predicted. “And I think the balance will shutter.”