Posh Members-Only Club Coming to Center City
For as long as there has been an America, there have been luxurious clubs catered to the well-heeled. Imagine the type of club inhabited by a New York man of means – dark wainscotting, Oriental carpets, and a thick cloud of cigar smoke wafting through the air. Now, take everything you thought you knew about the members-only club and toss it out the window. Coming in 2019 to Center City will be the Fitler Club, a new concept in posh entertainment geared at the young and well-to-do of Philadelphia.
As provided by M-Rad Architecture, this rendering shows what the youthful, members-only Fitler Club will look like.
The former Marketplace Design Center, soon to host Aramark’s world headquarters, is located at 2400 Market Street. The lower three floors will be the home of the Fitler Club, taking up some 75,000 square feet of real estate. As per the Philadelphia Inquirer, the club will consist of “fitness facilities, fine dining, hotel rooms, coworking offices, event spaces, and other amenities.” There will be a fourteen-room, five-star hotel, a screening room offering first run movies, a fitness center with a 75-foot lap pool, and plenteous event space, including balconies that jut out over the Schuylkill River. Hospitality financier David Gutstadt, who is the brains behind the members-only club, says that the goal is to have a space that members can use 24/7.
Gutstadt’s lavish plans have enticed the backing of over 75 investors, including basketball hall-of-famer and former naval officer David Robinson’s Admiral Capital Group. He says that he would like to see the Fitler Club become part of a national chain, setting a new standard for youthful social clubs that defy their fathers’ and grandfathers’ conventions of what a members-only club should encompass.
“When you look at the aesthetics and you walk in and you see 100 years of presidents of the club and a majority are old white men, I think the younger demographic says, ‘I don’t want to join my father’s country club; I want my own identity,’ ” said Zack Bates, chief executive of Newport Beach, Calif.-based members’ clubs consultancy Private Club Marketing. For them, there will be the Fitler Club as of 2019.
