Today the brand has become a global chain. There are 38 Soho Houses with another dozen or so in the pipeline.
While celebrity sightings remain well documented, Soho House has a strict no phones and no tittle-tattle policy. Despite this, we know Tom Cruise chose Soho House in Oxfordshire to celebrate his 60th birthday last year. It was in the original Soho House in London where American divorcee Meghan Markle met her future husband Prince Harry on a blind date in 2016.
Founded in London in 1995 by impresario Nick Jones, Soho House today is majority owned by sometimes-controversial US real estate billionaire Ron Burkle. Visionary Jones resigned as CEO last year, and in recent years some have questioned just how cool Soho House remains, given its relentless global expansion and seemingly open-slather membership policy.
Plans for the Sydney outpost show a five-level venue with a cabaret room, gym, members’ lounge, outdoor terraces, a studio, bar and dining areas and a rooftop swimming pool. The maximum number of patrons and staff would be capped at 1107 people at any time.
But others have been down this path before and failed.
Back in 2005 the A-list were supposedly waiting with bated breath for the opening of the Pacific Club in a beautiful old building adjacent to Central Station.
Tanked: Robert Gorman had big plans for a private club in Sydney that never materialised.Credit: Wade Laube
The brainchild of former model turned slick British entrepreneur Robert Gorman, the Pacific Club at the old Railway Institute was to have operated as a members-only private club for the local and visiting arts and media set.
Gorman hired Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson’s Sydney-based sister, Jane, to help raise the seemingly modest $10 million needed for the club’s fit-out, designed by the London-based celebrity decorator Ilse Crawford.
But after many months in limbo, the project eventually tanked, leaving several high-profile investors seething.
In more recent years Sydney’s home-grown hospo baron Justin Hemmes had the Level Six private club running inside his George Street Ivy complex.
Members only: Justin Hemmes has been down the private members’ club path before with his Level 6 venue at Ivy.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
At one point invite-only members were reportedly paying $5500 a year to join, and while media were “strictly forbidden”, I managed to slip past security several times to see yet another bunch of rich alpha males doing what they do best – boasting.
It’s not clear if the Level Six club still exists. Even Hemmes was unsure when I asked.
Private members’ clubs have been part of Sydney’s social fabric for generations.
The old boys inside the Australian Club on Macquarie Street can rest easy in their Chesterfields and brandy balloons, having recently thwarted the prospect of women joining. Up the road at the women-only Queen’s Club, the membership has no intention of changing the status quo and allowing men to join any time soon.
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Perhaps the greatest indicator of Soho House’s Sydney prospects can be found on the sands of Bondi Beach.
Staff at Waverley Council say too much work will be required to stage the International Beach Festival event in February 2024 – proposed by Janek Gazecki, the man behind the controversial Amalfi Beach Club proposal, which resulted in a petition with 30,000 signatures against it, furious about the prospect of having the sacred, egalitarian sands fenced off for those willing to pay.
And once again we learnt that what may appeal elsewhere in the world is not necessarily a sure thing in Sydney.
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