Think of the Nexus Club as the Midtown clubs of yore, but without the stuffy furniture and photos of Ivy League quads on the walls. It’s the downtown loft version of those relics – having taken over a full floor of 100 Church, the commercial building between Barclay and Park Place – with the squash courts replaced with Peloton machines. And this one is not exclusive by definition, just by price tag.

Here’s how it evolved: Financier Joe Lewis (the currency trader and private investor) of the Tavistock Group has a crazy huge portfolio of 200 businesses, including planned communities across the globe, a couple dozen restaurants, the Tottenham Hotspur football club, etc. Lewis works with a small team at the top, and one of them, Doug McMahon, was one of the executives who developed a 600-acre estate in the Bahamas as a private luxury residence slash golf resort (Lewis lives in the Bahamas). That group teamed with outside shareholders (no one you would know, just Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Justin Timberlake) to make Albany, the Nexus Luxury group’s first endeavor. It was a hit.

So now the Nexus brand is expanding, and the club here is their first foray into the third space arena and their first urban venture. It opened in May and now has more than 300 families as members, which could expand to 900, depending on how the space is used. It costs $20k to join and $12,500 per family in dues per year (that includes kids up to age 40, which, of course, made me wonder what I will be doing to support my children when I am in my mid-70s). Kids must be accompanied by their parents, not their caregivers. The notion is to create a community similar to the suburban country club.

Safe to say it’s gorgeous. 36,000 square feet designed by Morris Adjmi (for some local context, 290 West at Canal and 11 N. Moore kitty-cornered from Walker’s are his). There’s a lot of programming in that much space, so best to use bullet points. And this list is not exhaustive:

• Central Café (this was one of my favorite spaces) with grab-and-go food and a Dylan’s Candy Bar
• Rosé, the champagne bar
• LOMA (for Lower Manhattan), a restaurant helmed by Ron Rosselli from Locanda Verde
• Shelby, a Justin Timberlake-designed bar (he grew up in Shelby Forest, a small town outside Memphis)
• The Den, a tween space with a touch-screen jukebox and gaming stations
• Kids Club with childcare
• Curated events and tickets from a concierge
• A spa with cryotherapy, botox and other services
• A clubroom that turns into a sports bar on weekends
• 9 Blade G-4 jets waiting at Teterboro to take members to Albany on select weekends

Yes, it’s a lot to absorb. The clubs wants to see local families joining, as well as people who work downtown and visitors who want this sort of service at their disposal when in town. And McMahon said he envisions Nexus being *the* downtown club for decades to come. “We hope this is here for the long term, the way the uptown clubs were at the turn of the century.”