The Women Running NYC’s Most Exclusive Social Club and the Men Who Are Desperate to Join
Two blocks from Trump Tower in Manhattan, hordes of sweaty tourists walk by an innocuous office building on 55th Street. You wouldn’t guess it from the outside, but the address hosts CORE, one of the most elite social clubs in the country.
Beyond the unmarked doors, there’s a mod foyer adorned with bold graffiti-style art from Bushwick Collective. A man sits in a silver velvet armchair murmuring into a cell phone, his hand covers his mouth to shield what he's saying.
At a dining table, three businesswomen in power suits and single sole pumps sip tea near a piano labeled “Do Not Play." Soft electro-house music floats through the air. It's the kind of place where, once, a member sold the original Batmobile to another member. And people from nearby Trump Tower, including the president, have dropped in for visits.
Not just anyone can join CORE-you have to be hand-picked. Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen was so desperate, he dipped into his shady shell company to help pay dues, according to The New Yorker.
The cost? A $50,000 initiation charge, plus $17,000 annually.
CORE was established in September 2005, but its members-only model has been around for centuries. British high society popularized the trend in the 1800s and it didn't take long for wealthy New Yorkers to catch on. Thought to be the oldest private club in the city, Union Club was organized in 1836 and had a membership described as "men who are, rather than men who do," by Fortune magazine in 1932. The Colony Club on Park Avenue, the first all-female club founded in 1903, became a premiere hotspot for society women-and it's still thriving.
More recently, social clubs have positioned themselves to challenge the antiquated ways of Manhattan's Gilded Age groups. The Wing, opened in 2016, is by women and for women with a focus on "the professional, civic, social, and economic advancement of women through community," as stated on their site. The selective Soho House, which boasts a 27,000 person waitlist, was exported from London in 2003 and is known for boozy poolside rooftop bashes and yuppie members.
"Those are really amateur kids' playpens to me," longtime CORE member and onetime Soho House member Richard David Story, the former editor of luxury magazine Departures, tells me of CORE's contemporaries. "[Soho House] is perfectly nice if you don't have anyplace else to go... But it's not a bragging right. I'm not saying it's obnoxious, but, if you were to brag, I think you would brag about CORE, not Soho House."
CORE-once described by Guy Trebay in The New York Times as a “portal” to power-is run by two women, New York couple Jennie and Dangene Enterprise. They've been married since 2011 and legally changed their last names to the very apropos Enterprise, "because it's cool." Plus, they boast, hardly anyone has the surname.
Last month, I sat down with the Enterprises at their usual table in the far back-right corner of CORE's restaurant inside the club's private five-floor space. Dressed in head-to-toe black outfits, the women are careful not to reveal too much-they dodge questions about their top-secret guest list and try to avoid the topic of what it means when a member lands smack in the middle of a historic federal investigation.
They explain how they carefully curate their highly exclusive membership roster through "meritocracy," plucking only the best from industries like politics, fashion, business, media, tech, and sports. A source with ties to the club says those who’ve made the cut include: New York gallerist Marianne Boesky, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, departing Starbucks executive chairman Howard Schultz, and entrepreneur J. Christopher Burch.
A-Rod has been known to frequent the club. Sean 'Diddy' Combs hosted rappers Nelly and Jay-Z at the launch of his cologne there. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have been pictured together at CORE and Trump attended a book party launch with family friend and Rupert Murdoch ex Wendi Murdoch. The Observer, appropriately, held their Power 100 event there in 2012.
The Enterprises won't confirm or deny whether or not Cohen is a member when I ask.
They will say, though, the club has and will remain “agnostic” about what their own have accomplished-and how they’ve done it. "I'm not saying that we're not going to judge it," says Jennie, 53. "The criteria for us was if somebody has an interesting story to tell, they'd be a great member."
"Everyone [here] has a story to tell," adds Dangene, 59. "You put [special counsel Robert] Mueller on any one of our members and they'd all show up on Page Six, I mean it's not like you get to the top without..."
But Jennie interrupts her.
"Our members are inevitably going to be in the press," Jennie says, eager to change the subject. "They just are. They're doing press-worthy things."
Just as the Enterprises keep their guest list hush-hush, most high-profile members don't go around talking to reporters about CORE. That's not the case, however, with Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director of 10 days and a CORE member since it opened.
“It’s my home away from home,” he tells me by phone. He adores both Jennie, whom he has known for years, and Dangene, calling them "world-class people" with a keen eye for "experiential business."
Scaramucci visits the club - located across the street from his Madison Avenue office - almost every morning for a coffee and green juice, fits in workouts with a personal trainer when he can, and takes meetings with partners over lunch. He favors CORE’s hip, casual atmosphere and mix of “successful people that have an appreciation for their success, but aren't hoity-toity” over the more traditional and formal Williams Club on 43rd or Harvard Club on 44th. He says "politics are sort of ignored inside the club."
In spite of members' varied political beliefs-the Clintons are rumored members-CORE remains a neutral zone. Story says he once worked out at the gym next to Valerie Jarrett's sister who was in town and, an hour later, saw Scaramucci in the men's locker room.
The club was never meant to gather a "homogenous group of people" together, explains Jennie. “Like, people have a strong point of view on Anthony [Scaramucci], they love him, they hate him, whatever. Bottom line is he’s done extraordinary things in life.”
Every month, CORE opens its doors for a breakfast panel on female empowerment, with past guests like Her Royal Highness Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Weight Watchers CEO Mindy Grossman, and Shelly Porges, who served as national finance co-chairman for Ready for Hillary, a grassroots effort to encourage Hillary Clinton to run for President in 2016. The series is organized by Wendy Diamond, founder of Women's Entrepreneurship Day Organization, a private philanthropic organization that supports women in business worldwide.
"Sure, [CORE] can be a boys’ club at times, but it's also a club for women," says Diamond. "Jennie has created an environment that's warm and inviting for everyone, like you could be sitting next to the CEO of Citi Bank and not even know it, because there's not a sense of that person is more important than someone else."
Jennie, a native New Yorker with an infectious energy, launched CORE in 2005. She wanted to create a new-age social club, one devoid of a dress code, that catered to the ultra-rich.
Dangene says, motioning to my loose Zara jeans: “You’re able to sit here wearing whatever you want, we’re not, like, in a back room hiding.”
“There’s no rules whatsoever,” Jennie clarifies. “We’re not going to tell somebody how to dress... We want our members to celebrate what is truly the greatest luxury, which is to combine work and play."
And she had experience: At age 13, she started a tennis camp on Long Island’s Shelter Island for bored kids and made $10,000 in three months. Years later, as an undergrad student at Fordham University, she opened a coffee-house-turned-speakeasy. In the ’90s, she developed the concept for Reebok Sports Club.
It was important CORE be apolitical and inclusive. The club has an equal number of male and female members. Jennie says: "When founding CORE it was essential to curate not a sublime and homogeneous community, but rather a provocative and passionate one."
Jennie met Dangene around 2008, while searching for a beauty expert to bring onto the CORE staff. At the time, Dangene, a self-described "over-achiever," was operating her Institute of Skinovation, a customized head-to-toe skincare program, in California. When they met for a session, they’d both only had relationships with men (Dangene had been married three times). But their chemistry was undeniable.
“We’re like characters in an emotional movie with fireworks and a fade to black ending,” says Jennie. “We feel like we are 16 years old, with these types of emotions.”
On July 24, 2011-the very first day they could legally wed in New York-they tied the knot. Now, they share the same last name, three adorable dogs, an email address, and CORE. They even managed to connect their cell phones, so they can see the other's calls.
"It creates efficiency but also it allows us to not have to duplicate work, and we can sort of just spend time moving forward," says Jennie. "Whether it's in our businesses or in other parts of our lives."
Their approach to the business is described by Story as "smart, focused, and no-nonsense."
The couple now splits their time between New York and Italy, where Jennie has family. They're opening CORE's second location in Milan next year. There's no waitlist, yet. Which is good news for Scaramucci, who was over the moon when he heard the news.
"I go to Milan all the time," he says. "I hope my membership carries over there!"
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