I don’t often mention that I belonged to The Wing, the women’s-only social club that came to epitomize a distinctly mid-2010s blend of sisterhood and girlboss consumerism. By the time it closed less than six years after it opened, the pendulum of public opinion had already swung away from these timestamped sensibilities and, by extension, the club itself.
My membership was out of character. I’m socially awkward and not much of a joiner. But I’d just moved to New York for work and needed to make friends — or, at least, to learn how to embrace being the kind of person who moves to New York and tries to make friends. It seemed only right that I should use my newfound disposable income to pursue these goals through a curated lifestyle experience. After all, isn’t that what life in the big city is all about?
This take was probably shallow. And yet, nearly a decade later, it’s coming true. In a K-shaped economy where the wealthy are thriving and everyone else is freaking out, private clubs are having a renaissance.
In major cities and a growing number of mid-size metros, niche members-only hangouts have emerged as a remedy for commercial landlords’ post-pandemic woes and upwardly-mobile professionals’ yearning for in-person togetherness. New York City is the epicenter of the craze; more than 30 new clubs have opened for business there in the last few years alone. They range from spa-like wellness spots such as Lore and Othership, hospitality-coworking hybrids including NeueHouse and Spring Place, and bastions of luxury like Casa Cipriani and Aman, with annual fees in the five to six figures, hoop-jumping application processes, and, in Cipriani’s case, a waitlist reported in the thousands. The trend has even reached the city’s outer boroughs: In Queens’ Jacob Riis Park, on a beloved public waterfront nicknamed “the People’s Beach,” a long-shuttered bathhouse is set to reopen with a members-only club this summer.
Whether they’re targeting wellness fanatics, see-and-be-seen scenesters, self-employed creatives, or the wealthiest 0.01%, these gated social communities are calibrated for optimization. In an age of heightened loneliness and uncertainty, private clubs are selling not only camaraderie and controlled environments but the right kind of each, part of an expanding consumer caste system built on exclusive member perks.
Private clubs may even be the market’s ideal answer for the decline in places for people to get together — for those who can afford it.
On a recent Friday afternoon at Scott Avenue Associates — an expansive two-year-old social club tucked into East Williamsburg’s industrial fringe — a 5 p.m. spritz cart marked the shift from workday to happy hour. Servers delivered fizzy drinks straight to the sofas where my group of four was arranged. A musician named Alex, a fellow first-time visitor, reached for an olive from a complimentary snack tray and mused, “now this is lounge.”
The clubhouse was a perfectly self-contained ecosystem that buzzed with camera-ready 20- and 30-somethings who looked like they’d answered the same party-scene casting call, its main common room bursting with greenery and breakable-looking ceramics. We mosied to an upstairs bar for oysters and martinis before hitting a top-floor spa circuit replete with a steam room, dry saunas, a hot tub, and a cold-plunge bath. (It was a little too chilly for a dip in the rooftop swimming pool.)
Every aspect of the experience felt inorganic. It also wasn’t hard to imagine getting used to.
The commercial real-estate sector may be banking on many others feeling the same. Hospitality and wellness service providers now outnumber brick-and-mortar stores across the US, a recent milestone in the ongoing ‘retail apocalypse.’ Then there’s the glut of unclaimed office space; despite more companies mandating returns to the workplace, Avison Young reports that US office leasing activity in Q1 2026 totaled nearly 22% below the pre-pandemic quarterly average of 78.6 million square feet.
“These membership-based operators offer landlords attractive characteristics like longer-term leases, consistent foot traffic during off-peak hours, and members with discretionary income that benefits the surrounding tenants,” says Dan Spiegel, senior vice president and managing director at Coldwell Banker Commercial. For deep-pocketed investors, this presents an attractive business proposition. (It’s an open secret that Matthew and Gabriella Khalil, the husband and wife duo behind Scott Avenue Associates and its sister club in Manhattan’s Financial District, have ties to the Cayman Islands-based billionaire and luxury real-estate developer Ken Dart; public property transfer documents link Dart holding companies to the recent sales of both clubs’ buildings.)
Cultural and institutional silence about money is an enormously important part of legitimating and normalizing vast inequalities.Rachel Sherman
The club boom also reflects a broader shift toward commerce built around elevated amenities and services. At downtown Cincinnati’s Social House, which opened in late 2024, members pay a $1,000—$6,000 initiation fee and roughly $600 quarterly for fitness and sauna facilities, dining, and a workspace and podcast studio, as well as private cultural events. “Membership is not just access to a place. It’s access to experiences you can’t find anywhere else,” owner Chris Cicchinelli tells me. Even country club membership numbers and waitlists are reportedly on the rise following an existentially-threatening drop pre-pandemic, according to the industry marketing consultancy Private Club Marketing — and millennials appear to be driving the pattern.
Lore, a sauna and bathing club that opened in New York’s East Village last September, makes a similar pitch. Co-owner James O’Reilly says the facility offers “a really nice way to spend time with a friend because you’re not competing with the phone for attention and you’re not consuming something that changes your state but then leaves you depleted, like alcohol.” There is currently a waitlist “in the hundreds” for the club’s $250 monthly membership, he adds.
Today’s social clubs can trace their lineage to London’s Georgian-era ‘gentlemen’s clubs,’ which gave noblemen a space to carouse with their fellow aristocrats. In the US, gentlemen’s clubs gained momentum during the Gilded Age as patrician stalwarts and newly-anointed titans of industry jockeyed for influence over cities across the country. A number of these establishments are still in operation (though most now accept women as members). New York has more than 20, including the nearly 200-year-old Union Club.
Now as then, joining the most exclusive private establishments typically requires an exhaustive application and vetting process, often including referral letters from multiple existing members. Many call for an initiation fee on top of recurring dues and monthly spending minimums at the clubs’ in-house dining establishments. Ironclad codes of conduct are also par for the course.
Secrecy is paramount. Most of New York’s top-tier clubs — old and new alike — forbid photography, posting about the club on social media, and revealing details about the club or its members to the press. A writer friend received a stern warning a few years ago for hosting a book launch at her 135-year-old Manhattan social club (founded by J.P. Morgan, no less) after the event made its way onto an attendee’s newsletter. A lawyer friend was hesitant to speak even off the record about the demographics of her Fifth Avenue club for fear of breaking its rules, which puts members at risk of expulsion.
This tight-lipped etiquette protects the privacy of high-powered and public-facing club members. It also has the effect of maintaining a buffer of breeding, ensuring a pool of pedigreed dues-payers without interference from outsiders. “Cultural and institutional silence about money is an enormously important part of legitimating and normalizing vast inequalities, and this is one aspect of that,” says the sociologist Rachel Sherman, author of “Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence.” Many of the clubs don’t even list their fees on public-facing materials.
Not every would-be member is a fan of the approach. Omar, a finance professional in his early 30s, started looking into social clubs about two years ago when he moved from London to New York. Many of his high-rolling colleagues hold memberships, mostly in a handful of old-guard legacy institutions. But Omar, who is using a pseudonym to prevent professional blowback, is wary of buying entry to a club before he’s seen what it provides.
“I too have used mystique as part of marketing and as a demonstrator of value, and I know that a lot of the time the mystique is made up,” Omar says. “I don’t love the idea of paying $10,000 just to peek behind the curtain.” But as a newcomer to town, he figured one of these clubs might provide a path to meeting like-minded people in his limited non-working hours.
He also got the sense that institutional affiliation is an important facet of American social life. “Even the various Greek societies that you guys have at colleges — which as a foreigner are completely confusing to me,” he explains, “seem to give a lot of people a rewarding experience, which gets them hooked on the idea.”
Sammi — a financial analyst, content creator, and sometimes-model who is also in her early 30s and living in New York — recently ended her Soho House membership after two years, citing disappointment in its networking ROI. “Did I get new business from Soho House? No. Have I made genuine friends at Soho House? No. I just really started evaluating what social currency it was bringing to me,” says Sammi, who is also withholding her identity for professional reasons.
Sammi’s frankness cuts to a core sell. Clubs implicitly position themselves as a vehicle for delivering members toward the lives they hope to inhabit and the people who are already there. Though I approached my own club as primarily a workspace, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least somewhat drawn to the idea of belonging to a band of chosen, well-connected insiders. I may not be a joiner, but I’m no fool.
Or maybe I am. “Social clubs are marketed as networking portals, but in reality, they operate more as places to be seen and badges to be worn,” says Jonathan Greene, a real estate investor and host of the “Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing” podcast.
Greene doesn’t believe clubs are a viable venture, either: “I wouldn’t invest in a social club because I don’t think there is a long-term financial model built into it. Exclusivity in one location, or even if there are related clubs, is hard to scale.”
Whether the private-club boom has real staying power is still anyone’s guess. For now, the willing and able are taking their chances.
Omar may be skeptical of the club world, but he’s still looking for one worth belonging to.
Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She’s based in New York City.
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