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A new social club in a Rockefeller Center penthouse is betting that executives will pay $400 a month to access its lounges and its network of CEOs and directors. Here's what it looks like inside.
A new social club in a Rockefeller Center penthouse is betting that executives will pay $400 a month to access its lounges and its network of CEOs and directors. Here's what it looks like inside.
I took a tour of the club, and the main draw seemed to be its elite network of members, who come from companies like Bloomberg, UBS, Christie's, Bank of America, and Merrill Lynch.
The $400 per month membership fee includes access to the lounges, conference room, bar and restaurant, and various events.
In the penthouse of a Rockefeller Center tower, a new social club is betting that executives will pay $400 a month for access to its lounges and its elite network of CEOs and directors.
Club 75, which opened in October 2018, is operated and managed by Convene, the first venture of its kind for the flexible working company. The club was designed in partnership with the building's landlord, RXR Realty.
I recently took a tour of the penthouse space, which includes shared workspaces, a conference room, a billiards table, and a full restaurant and bar.
"We're not an office, we're certainly not your home, but we want to try to find something in between," Camilla Andersson-Stuessi of Convene told me. "A lot of our members here are very established either entrepreneurs or business leaders that have their own offices that are looking for another space to connect and to interact and to do the meetings that they don't do in their office or do the work that's not necessarily on your laptop."
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The 300+ members come from companies including Bloomberg, Cadillac, ESPN, UBS, Christie's, as well as from Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which are tenants of the building. The most common job titles of members at Club 75, according to Andersson-Stuessi, are CEO, president, founder, partner, director, and head of marketing.
I took a tour of Club 75 on a recent spring afternoon. Here's what it looks like.
Club 75, a members-only social and work club for business professionals, is located inside 75 Rockefeller Plaza at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan.
It launched in October 2018 with a founding membership base of about 300 members, primarily gathered through referrals of business partners, friends, and families.
On a recent spring afternoon, I took the elevator up to the 32nd floor at 75 Rockefeller, where members are greeted at a reception desk.
Club 75's members come from companies including Bloomberg, Cadillac, ESPN, UBS, Christie's, Bank of America, and Merrill Lynch.
The space was stylish and light-filled, with plenty of plants and mid-century modern design elements throughout.
A publicist told me the space was inspired by the Art Deco buildings of surrounding Rockefeller Center.
Club 75 has a full bar and restaurant, designed with green velvet bar stools and gold-toned accents.
Menu items include "Seared Black Sea Bass" for $28, a Wagyu burger for $19, and a shrimp cobb salad for $23.
The cocktails, which cost $17, have names like "Gold Standard," "Maverick," and "Mojito in Exile."
Club 75's members are established entrepreneurs and business leaders in fields such as law, real estate, events, media, and other industries, Andersson-Stuessi told me.
"We're not discriminative about a specific industry," she said. "It's more where you are in your career, and we're usually quite established, I think, to be able to afford it and to have the need for it."
According to Andersson-Stuessi, some of the most common job titles of members are CEO, president, founder, partner, director, and chief marketing officer.
The club's eclectic art collection includes pieces by Picasso, Miro, Andy Warhol, and Dr. Seuss.
Club 75 is not meant to be a full-time workspace for remote workers. "We're not an office, we're certainly not your home, but we want to try to find something in between," Andersson-Stuessi said.
"A lot of our members here are very established either entrepreneurs or business leaders that have their own offices that are looking for another space to connect and to interact and to do maybe the meetings that they don't do in their office or do the work that's not necessarily on your laptop," she told me.
The club is "never crowded and never empty," Andersson-Stuessi said, and that certainly seemed to be the case when I visited on a Tuesday afternoon.
Some people were working quietly by themselves, while others were engaged in quiet conversations.
The bar and restaurant area started to grow a bit louder around 4 p.m., toward the end of the workday.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the busiest days at the club, according to Andersson-Stuessi. It is not open on weekends.
Membership at the club costs $400 per month.
To be considered, potential members fill out an online application and then take a tour of the space to meet with the membership team.
There's no list of specific criteria to get into the club, but potential members are asked how they would use the club and how it would help support their daily work routines and cultivate professional relationships.
In addition to the surrounding Rockefeller Center towers, the penthouse club offers downtown views that include the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center.
"Traditionally these spaces were reserved for top hedge funds, but what they wanted to do was to take this prime real estate and prime reviews and make it accessible to not only people in the building, but to a broader set," Andersson-Stuessi said. "So that's the reason we're on the 32nd floor."
Club 75 includes a billiards room with a television for members to take a break from work.
Another was a "Women in Sports" dinner, which brought together leaders in the sports and cultural worlds and focused on how to create positive change and opportunity for women in sports.
A conference room provides a private space for larger group meetings at the club.
Furniture at Club 75 comes from designers such as Gubi, Knoll, Saarinen, Design Within Reach, Muuto, and Eames.
After my tour of Club 75, my impression was that the main draw of the club isn't its space or its Rockefeller Center location, but rather its elite network of CEOS and other business leaders.
As Andersson-Stuessi told me, the club was created for business professionals who are already leaders in their field.
This is a contrast to other social and work clubs such as Spring Place, which I visited in October and which seemed to be geared toward young people working in creative fields, primarily fashion.
And Soho House, which has grown into a global network, targets people in creative industries and tends to be a celebrity hotspot — a much different scene than Club 75.
