CORE: Club is a notorious hangout for New York's elite, from Wall Streeters to professional athletes. We spent the day to see what its all about.
CORE: Club isn't easy to get into.
The Manhattan club counts bigwigs from the city's major industries as members, including NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, billionaire fashion entrepreneur J. Christopher Burch, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman.
But don't mistake it for the stuffy Upper East Side clubs that have defined New York City's 1% for more than a century, founder Jennie Enterprise told Business Insider. CORE: Club seeks to be "the anticlub."
We recently spent the day at CORE to see what it's all about.
CORE: Club is located in midtown Manhattan, a short walk from Fifth Avenue, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, and dozens of corporate HQs. A perfect location for the 1% who form the club's core membership.
The entrance is tucked into a building. When you walk in you're greeted by a rotating selection of contemporary art, curated by New York Times columnist Bee Shapiro and others. To join, you'll have to pony up a $50,000 initiation fee and approximately $17,000 in annual dues.
Next to the elevators are iPads listing the club's upcoming events — there are more than 350 per year — along with various membership perks offered by partners like Bulgari Hotels, yacht charter app YachtLife, and private aviation company Wheels Up.
The club also offers what Enterprise calls "experiential installations."
A recent excursion ferried members via Rolls Royce upstate to renowned chef Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Members then took a tour of art collectors Raymond Learsy and Melva Bucksbaum's private art collection, which features works by Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Art is a cornerstone of CORE: Club, having been curated from the beginning by art world impresario Yvonne Force. Her husband, artist Leo Villareal, designed the light installation in the elevator.
We headed to the CORE restaurant and bar to meet founder Jennie Enterprise. Unlike most social clubs, CORE has no dress code, cell phones are permitted, and members are encouraged to conduct "the business of life."
We were met by Greta Giordano, the club's director of member experience. Giordano has worked at Core since it opened in 2005.
Core has a terrace next to the restaurant where they hold events and members can have lunch. The club has around 1400 members currently.
Almost all of artwork in the club changes every few months, explained Giordano. "Flood," the red piece in back by painter Barnaby Furnas, is one of the few pieces that never changes.
The club restaurant was packed at noon on a Tuesday. Member Josh Schiller, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, told us that it is always full of people having "business power lunches."
This is the main dining room. We sat at Enterprise's usual table in back, where she explained that the idea behind CORE was to "create a business around people changing the world."
High-end "curation," Enterprise said, is key to attracting members. The restaurant was originally designed by celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. Last month, Italian chef Davide Venturini took over the kitchen after years of having it run by French master chef Bernard Liberatore.
After lunch with Enterprise, Giordano took us on a tour of the club. Nearly every CORE partner — that's what they call staff — I met on the tour had been with the club for more than a decade.
The library was bustling when I stopped in, with members holding business meetings, reading the newspaper, and getting work done.
I spent some time browsing the book selection, curated by Lea Carpenter, a novelist and former publisher of the Paris Review. For a bookworm like me, the collection was incredible.
The library has two computers on hand for printing or for general use. From the looks of the members, it was hardly necessary.
The art in the library is curated separately from the rest of the club. Caroline Taylor, a curator specializing in emerging artists, picked these pieces.
On the left is an untitled acrylic painting by Jeremy Deprez, whose paintings and sculptures are often inspired everyday objects from his immediate surroundings like a men's shirt.
On the right is a piece by artist Brian Belott that mixes collage, painting, and sculpture. Belott's absurdist pieces have been featured in the Museum of Modern Art, as well as numerous galleries.
Source: Caroline Taylor
Even the furniture changes. This was not what it looked like when we were there.
There are unique touches everywhere. That wave pattern on the right is called the "Core pattern," Giordano told me. It's a recurring design element throughout the club.
This piece was made by member Rachel Lee Hovnanian, an artist who uses a variety of mediums to explore "contemporary notions of narcissism, obsession and intimacy."
Source: Rachel Lee Hovnanian
Down the hall, there's a recently renovated private space that members can book. Privacy is a core value that "we're very proud of and very protective of," Enterprise said, adding that no one leaks information about the deals or meetings that go down at the club.
This is the gym. It's nothing extravagant, but it's quiet and has everything you need. The club also offers sessions with My30Minutes, a full-body suit that uses electric muscle stimulation to maximize workouts.
There are interesting patterns and architectural touches everywhere. The building was designed by SPAN Architecture and Jean Gabriel Nuekomm.
Check out more about SPAN here and Jean Gabriel Nuekomm here»
This wooden bench is an architectural element that spans both the spa and locker room floor as well as the gym above it.
This is the men's locker room. There are 45 lockers for daily use, and CORE encourages members to keep a gym bag on site. When members are done working out, they wash the clothes and have them ready for next time.
There's a steam room and sauna, as well as three showers with everything necessary for pampering. The women's locker room has equivalent facilities, Giordano said.
There's every kind of facial, shaving, or beauty product you could need. And if a particular member has a favorite product, you can be sure it will be there when they're in the club.
CORE has an "intelligence" program that they use to "understand members on every level," according to Enterprise.
That means building a database of each member's preferences, social affilations, family members, business dealings, and hobbies so they "feel like the most important people in the world."
This is the men's salon. Stylist Paul Labrecque runs both the men and women's salons, which offer full-service hair, makeup, nail, and skincare. The women's salon (not picture) is quite a bit larger and more elaborate than the men's.
From there we headed upstairs to the Institute of Skinovation, founded by Enterprise's wife Dangene Enterprise. The Institute is "like the Mayo Clinic for beauty," Enterprise told Business Insider.
Enterprise described it as a mix between a doctor's office, a spa, and a gym that uses an array of state of the art equipment, from medical-grade LEDs to microdermabrasion to take off "anything brown, red, bumpy or veiny that you weren't born with."
The Institute is the only part of CORE that is open to the public.
I didn't get a chance to visit the suites — four apartments that members can rent out as needed. They were booked when I visited, but here's a look.
Over the next year or so, CORE plans to open additional locations in downtown Manhattan and Milan, Italy. The "2.0 model" of CORE, according to Enterprise, will have more suites for members, like this one, and additional food and beverage options.
When we headed back to the lounge in the late afternoon, it was bustling with the post-work crowd. There, we met Raymond Learsy, a retired commodities trader and founding member. An art collector, Learsy said that he joined because of the club's "studied approach" to contemporary art.
We also met Harvey Schiller, another founding member and a major player in the sports business world. After being a member of "too many clubs," he said, he enjoys CORE because of its "comfortable atmosphere."
Curtis Martin, the Hall of Fame New York Jets running back and a longtime member, said that he uses CORE as his own personal office, running and developing multiple businesses from the club.
“I think everyone feels comfortable regardless of who you are,” he said. “I’ve been in those other [clubs] … maybe it’s me, but they don’t have the warmth that I believe CORE has.”
Afterwards we headed to the CORE gallery next to the lobby. Here, the club showcases artists brought in by various curators. Sometimes, they exhibit the extensive private art collections of the club's members.
On the day we visited, the club was featuring an exhibition by black and white photographer Sid Kaplan, widely considered to be a "photographer's photographer."
The theater was packed. Most nights, the theater hosts talks with finance thought leaders, authors, and stars of the art and media world, like NBC News correspondent Katy Tur, artist Ai Wei Wei, and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
That night, Fox Business host Liz Claman interviewed Denise Shull, the "hedge fund whisperer." Shull works with Wall Street money managers to help them break through performance slumps and confidence crises.
Shull was the inspiration for the character Wendy Rhoades on the Showtime drama 'Billions'.