The Cape Town Club is back, reimagined for a diverse and dynamic city.
Almost everywhere you look in the building Sir Herbert Baker designed for Cape Town’s City Club in the 1890s, tradesmen are hard at work.
A few days before the “soft launch” of the new Cape Town Club, now a tenant in the Queen Victoria Street building, it is gradually coming back to life as a private members’ club for the 21st century.
This time, though, it won’t be open only to gentlemen, or even only men. “Diversity is at the heart of what we want the club to be,” says executive director Phil Thurston, who’s spent the last five years overseeing the revival of the Rand Club in central Johannesburg.
“We don’t care where you come from, how old you are, what level of education you have, what colour and sex you are, or anything else. This was my approach at the Rand Club, and it really worked. We think there’s a need in Cape Town for a private members’ club with the same ethos.”
NEW SOCIAL HUB
“We” is Thurston and British lawyer/insurance company owner/energy expert/LGBT activist/occasional drag artist Steve Wardlaw, who have registered a company to operate the Cape Town Club as the CBD’s new social and networking hub.
The duo met 18 years ago when Thurston was running The Glen Boutique Hotel in Sea Point (and increasing its turnover by a factor of 20) and Wardlaw was a regular guest on his biannual holidays in Cape Town.
“We became great friends, and we’ve always wanted to do something together,” says Thurston. “Steve is a member of a couple of clubs in London, and we talked about reviving the Cape Town Club several years ago.”
SMUTS, RHODES & MANDELA
Roos has since obtained planning permission for an 18-storey luxury apartment block on the car park, and Thurston and Wardlaw have signed a 10-year lease on the club. The building came with everything that was inside when it last operated about seven years ago.
That included the table at which deputy prime minister General Jan Smuts drafted the successful September 1939 parliamentary resolution proposing that South Africa enter World War 2 on the side of Britain, a move which displaced his boss JBM Hertzog and propelled Smuts into Tuynhuys.
This table, with a commemorative brass plaque screwed to the surface, still sits in the well-preserved Smuts Room, one of eight venues which will be available for functions ranging from wine tastings, food pairings, business talks and quiz nights to dinners for up to 120 people in the cavernous first-floor ballroom. The Gallery restaurant above the pavement will have space for 50-60 diners.
Another boardroom has been named after Cecil John Rhodes, and the members’ bar no longer commemorates the contested legacy of the mining magnate and politician but that of Nelson Mandela.
LAVISH VICTORIAN INTERIOR
The Victoria Room, formerly a lounge to the left of the club’s main entrance, is already operating as Victoria’s Café, luring passing tourists and Capetonians keen to experience the cushy atmosphere and lavish Victorian interior.
The café, its adjoining lounge, the library on the opposite side of the lobby and the spectacular double-volume entrance hall are among the areas that have been returned to their former glory, a process which included the removal of several layers of movie set decorators’ whims. But the renovation and redecoration of all four floors and the basement (destined to be the Mara Lounge jazz venue featuring the club’s own band and regular guest artists) is a longer-term project.
“We’re operating as a start-up, so this will be a gradual process,” says Thurston. Still, the club is functional for the 80 people who have already joined, and the directors were optimistic that the hundreds of people who attended the preview canapé event and black-tie dinner would be sufficiently impressed to sign up.
JOIN THE CLUB
The quietly spoken but passionate Thurston says his experience at the Rand Club makes him optimistic. “During my time there we saw membership grow from 220 to about 650, and black membership from 1-2 % of the total to 20-30 %,” he said. “There’s clearly an appetite for what we’re offering.”
Full membership of the Cape Town Club costs less than R1 000 a month (with discounts for under-30s, under-21s and spouses), which buys access to the magnificent members-only Mandela Bar, discounts on the club’s food and beverage offerings and accommodation (eight ensuite rooms are almost ready), preferential rates from club suppliers, free rental of private function rooms, free entry to events promoted by the club and reciprocal benefits at 120 clubs worldwide.
But the days when private clubs can survive on membership fees alone are long gone, says Thurston, pointing out that the closure of the previous Cape Town Club was foreshadowed by bickering among members and newspaper articles about “financial ruin”.
“We’re running the operations side as a company because that’s the only way to make the club sustainable,” says Thurston. “We’ll still have committees, but management will take many of the key decisions.”
The club is launching lean, with only 12 staff, and Thurston says the evolution of its offerings and personnel will be guided by members. Early supporters include former club stalwarts such as Philip Engelen and Bradley Bordiss who have bought into the vision for a venue that marries tradition and modernity.
EXCLUSIVE BUT AFFORDABLE
“The Rand Club taught me that there’s been a change in social behaviours and if clubs want to survive, they have to respond,” says Thurston. That’s why the dress code will simply be “business casual” and interpretations of what it means will be made by him (he was dressed in tailored jeans, a jacket and an open-necked shirt for our interview), not the custodian of a dusty rule book or a hidebound sub-committee.
“We want the club to be a place members can see as theirs,” he says. “It will be a little bit exclusive but still affordable, its diversity will make it more approachable, and it will be a place where people won’t be ostracised for who or what they are.”
After succeeding at the Rand Club, in a Johannesburg city centre notorious for crime, grime and potholes, Thurston says he is delighted by the environment created by the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID).
“It’s clean, it’s safe, and while it’s not as busy as Long Street or Bree Street, it’s very accessible and you can nearly always find parking,” he says. Talks are under way to reopen a sealed back entrance to the Western Cape High Court next door, which will mean almost direct access to the club for judges and lawyers, and once the neighbouring apartment block is built, club members will be able to use its pool and gym.
The American comedian Groucho Marx famously said he would refuse to join any club that would have him as a member. It’s tempting to think he might have made an exception for the reimagined venue at 18 Queen Victoria Street.
IMAGES: Ed Suter