London hybrid clubs gaining traction

London-based co-working space, members-club hybrid, the Clubhouse, is moving to a new location in May that is 50% larger than it’s first location. Founder Adam Blaskey has also set his sights on adding a further six to eight locations in London to the chains current two sites. Further east the Devonshire Club has just opened membership applications. This city based club, founded by Brian Clivaz, formerly of Home House and The Arts Club, puts its own spin on the concept with plans to offer members a blow bar, nail bar and on-site Botox treatments alongside its work stations. According to the Evening Standard, many of the city’s best networkers are embracing the trend and taking out memberships at multiple clubs.

I t didn’t take long for Adam Blaskey to weary of meeting clients in coffee shops and hotel lobbies. The trader-turned-property developer realised

the tea room in Brown’s Hotel might be plush but for courting Middle Eastern investors it wasn’t exactly private. So four years ago Blaskey opened the Clubhouse on Grafton Street, a stone’s throw away. His private members’ club was a space for business rather than pleasure: hot desks, hot coffee, with meeting rooms to welcome prospective partners, a lounge and events space.

It has proved popular. In May, Clubhouse members will swap Grafton Street for a base that is 50 per cent larger in St James’s Square. Another venue, on Grosvenor Hill, has opened, and after raising £900,000 from investors including Peter Roberts, the Pure Gym chain founder and ex-Sainsbury’s boss Justin King, Blaskey has his sights set on six to eight sites in London.

“I needed something more professional and business-like than meeting in coffee shops, which would give me flexibility and my business the best corporate image,” he says. “But I simply didn’t require a serviced office five days a week.”

Welcome to London’s new club class. No longer is the club just a male-dominated haunt to drop into for a relaxing cocktail on the way home where anything as productive as a laptop would be looked at askance. For many entrepreneurs, a perch in the Piano Bar at The Club at The Ivy doubles as the office too. The work-meets-play trend is fuelling a new boom in members’ clubs that offer the swank of a boutique hotel, not the soullessness of a conference suite, a landing point for locals and out-of-towners alike. Veterans of the scene say there is still plenty of room for growth.

“If you go back to the 1880s, there were 180 or so private clubs in London. Now we are just over 100,” says Brian Clivaz, who has Home House and the reinvention of The Arts Club on his CV. His latest project, which has just opened for membership applications, is the Devonshire Club, close to Liverpool Street station, which promises to bring some of the traditional clubland style of Mayfair to the Square Mile this summer.

WeWork in the South Bank

“The City has changed,” adds Clivaz. “It used to be mainly gentlemen. Now about 40 per cent of the employees in the City are female and there is no offering for women.” That’s why the Devonshire has “a blow bar, so if you are cycling furiously into work you can stop off here and still look fabulous for your board meeting,” he adds. Throw in a nail bar and Botox for both sexes and you can be forgiven for thinking it will just be for primping. But Clivaz believes he will attract his fair share of entrepreneurs too.

The post-financial crisis redundancy rounds and the strides made in mobile technology have proved to be a watershed. Now all a would-be captain of industry requires is an iPad, a macchiato and somewhere to sit. What they need to replicate is the creative friction of bumping into a colleague in an open-plan office and fomenting a disruptive business plan together. No wonder the best-connected networkers count membership at half a dozen clubs. By day, each venue is characterised by the quiet thrum of digital commerce.

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Long-standing operators have reacted to the new club class demands. Home House is trying to buy the New Cavendish Club down the road from its main site on Portman Square, with a view to creating a workspace for its members.

Meanwhile, Soho House has installed Soho Works in the same building as Shoreditch House. Open round-the-clock, to non-members as well as members, it has breakout spaces, a library, roof terrace and showers for creative types, so working doesn’t have to impinge on socialising. Monthly hot- desk membership is priced at £350. Even the venerable Mark’s Club lets people use their phones now in a private room on the top floor.

Inside Clubhouse, Grosvenor Hill

Everyone is at it. Entrepreneurs pace the floor on calls at One Alfred Place off Tottenham Court Road. At 12 Hay Hill, former royal aide Simon Robinson emphasises a business-first ethos, offering members a gym and brasserie-style restaurant to boot. The Arts Club and 5 Hertford Street, opened four years ago by Robin Birley, remain favourites for discreet chats.

Some less familiar players have entered the flexible working fray. Accountancy giant KPMG said last autumn it was opening a private members’ club in Mayfair for entertaining clients who would rather not journey east to its Canary Wharf base. They only get full access to the townhouse in Grosvenor Street if they are accompanied by someone from KPMG, so the taxman doesn’t consider the use of the facilities to be a perk.

Along Pall Mall, the Institute of Directors has upped its game by redecorating the members’ area, improving the catering and relaxing the dress code.

“London is a much more entrepreneurial society than it was 10 years ago and the economic uncertainty means people running their own businesses don’t want to commit to the expense of property leases,” says Marcus Watson, whose business development consultancy Adoreum helps clubs build their membership. And who can blame them, given that the capital’s office market remains red-hot?

The restaurant at the Institute of Directors

That delay in settling into a permanent location has seen a multitude of interim solutions pop up. One is Second Home, an old carpet factory off Brick Lane converted at a cost of £3 million by Rohan Silva, one of David Cameron’s former advisers. It is now a flexible workspace for creative companies, with up to 25 employees that typically put in long hours in sociable surroundings.

London’s mobile workforce has come a long way since Starbucks proclaimed itself to be a “third space” between work and home, whose wi-fi became more addictive than its caramel lattes.

Most workers are looking for something a cut above the average Regus but even then the lines are blurred. American import WeWork, which is taking more space in Soho and expanding to Paddington, is essentially a serviced office concept but sells membership for its communal spaces where the music pumps alongside the free lager.

Devonshire Club's champagne bar

There are more options on the horizon. Later this year, US members’ club NeueHouse opens in the capital, having taken 65,000 square feet in the refurbished Adelphi Building just off the Strand.

After starting life three years ago in Madison Square, it promises members will “enjoy work spaces, experiences and personalised services that will foster new ideas and important associations”. Overlooking the Thames, there are meeting rooms, a broadcasting studio and even a flower shop on site.

Back at the Clubhouse, where annual executive membership including access a couple of days per month costs £950 plus tax, Blaskey has signed up more than 800 individual members plus 250 companies such as car firm Tesla and chocolate maker Mondelez, which would prefer not to take much permanent city-centre office space for their staff.

The bar at 12 Hay Hill

But some clubs appear impervious to corporate overtures. Clivaz insists that the Devonshire — with a £2,400 annual membership and £2,400 joining fee — is looking for individuals, not institutions, to grace its bars, restaurants, spa and 68 bedrooms. “This is the time that really matters,” he says. “When we started Home House we went through our Christmas card lists to create a really good community. You don’t want an anonymous group of people just using it like a railway station.”

That’s fine. This new breed of on-the-move entrepreneurs are doing anything but passing through the capital.

Follow James Ashton on Twitter: @mrjamesashton