What went wrong for Glasgow's exclusive members club?

Picture the scene: it’s a warm summer’s night and the rooftop of a fashionable office space has been transformed into a botanical-themed dining room. Hundreds of luscious green plants line a long, banquet-style dining table and hang artfully from the ceiling above you. The table is laden with a three-course feast, and champagne and cocktails made-to-order from a free bar. There’s a stuffed goodie bag at every place setting, full of high-end wellness and self-care treats from sought-after brands. TV presenters mingle with influencers, business leaders and authors; Hollywood’s own Gerard Butler is at the other end of the table. 

It might not sound like the typical midweek evening in Glasgow, but this was the scene on the rooftop of The Schoolhouse, Kinning Park, on Wednesday 16 August 2023, when the crème de la crème of the city’s creative industries gathered to mark the arrival of Soho House. The private members’ club’s first outpost in Scotland was set to open in early 2024, in the former Parish Council Chambers and Collectors’ Hall, just off George Square. That August evening, revellers previewed detailed drawings showing an abundantly stocked bar, opulent wood panelling, verdant green ferns, marble topped tables and velveteen chairs. 

“It felt like there was no expense spared,” one attendee told me. “They really pulled out all the stops for the event; anything you wanted, you could have. And they were saying, ‘if you think this is good then just wait until you see what we’ve got planned.’

“So when they told us six months later it wasn’t happening anymore, it really was like, ‘what the hell?’”

In fact, it was only a mere five months later, on the evening of 19 January 2024, that Soho House members in Glasgow received an email from the club. “We have been working hard on this development for the last three years with the aim of opening in 2024,” it read. “But unfortunately it’s become clear that the House cannot be completed within the timeline we had anticipated.” After five months of whipping the city’s so-called cultural elite up to fever pitch, the plans were halted as abruptly as they had arrived. Where did it all go wrong for Glasgow’s Soho House?

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Welcome to Soho House, ya prick

David (not his real name) works in the entertainment industry. Like most people I spoke to about the ill-fated Glasgow House, he wanted to stay anonymous because he is still a member, having been approached directly ahead of the Glasgow launch. “Normally you have to get a recommendation from an existing member,” he told me. “But a load of people I know got a sort of fast-track invitation. I think they were really methodical in who they invited. It’s not lost on me how wanky this sounds but the events were like a who’s who of Scottish entertainment.” 

His description of a methodical selection process chimes with my experience reporting this story; in trying to track down members, apparent ‘cliques’ quickly emerged among the presenters, influencers, actors and journalists I contacted. Those who were involved were mostly reluctant to talk, but those who weren’t often didn’t know any members, or hadn’t even heard about the plans to begin with. “The whole thing feels very otherworldly,” one presenter mused to me. “Like people knew it was coming but nobody knew anyone involved or anything about it.”

David took out what’s called a ‘Cities Without Houses’ membership, for people who don’t have a local House but want to make use of those elsewhere (there are currently 46 sites globally, 14 of them in the UK). Fees are calculated based on different factors including location, membership type and age, but a Cities Without Houses membership in Glasgow for someone over 27 is currently advertised at a cool £225 a month or £2,700 annually, although David says he paid considerably less as a ‘founding member’. The Houses he’s visited and the events he attended in Glasgow were “fucking great, there’s no denying it.” Alongside the rest of the city’s creative upper crust, he waited patiently for the Glasgow site to open. 

Across the city and beyond, though, the plans were met with a more mixed response. Among the comments on a Soho House Instagram post announcing the Glasgow House is one voicing what many were undoubtedly thinking: “Glasgow?? Not Edinburgh??” Another reads more bluntly: “will there be a place to shoot up smack?” On TikTok, English comedian Josh Berry racked up thousands of likes with a skit about a ‘non-alcoholic’ drinks offering of Buckfast and a cold plunge pool in a wheelie bin, members greeted with a gruff “welcome to Soho House, ya prick.”

Down the garden path

Towards the end of 2023, David received an annoying if understandable email from Soho House: his fees would soon increase, what with the Glasgow site opening imminently. Fair enough, he and others thought: it made sense to pay more for a local House they’d use more often. 

But then, “very very quickly afterwards” he got another email: that fateful 19 January announcement that the Glasgow plans were being shelved. “It was like, you knew it wasn’t happening but you’re telling people ‘your money’s going up because it’s happening?’”

“They’d led us down the garden path… I think people definitely did start to get irritated by it and a lot of people started dropping off at that point.”

The reasons given for the cancellation were twofold: that the project “could not be completed in the timeline we had anticipated” and that “it’s clear that fitness is also a priority to members and our plans for the existing site didn’t include amenities such as a gym, that we now believe a Soho House needs to have.” They were still sure Glasgow was the right place for a Soho House, they said. They would continue to explore alternative locations.

But after three years and seemingly hundreds of thousands of pounds ploughed into the Glasgow project, members still wonder if that’s all there was to it. One member I spoke to, a business leader, speculated that Glasgow’s down-at-heel city centre might not project the image Soho House sought to cultivate. “They don’t want people walking out of a luxury club and going round the corner on to a sketchy street full of boarded up shops and people sleeping rough,” he guessed. A podcaster suggested “it just feels too London-y. My pals in similar industries are happiest sitting in a pub with a pint – maybe Glasgow’s just not stuck up enough for them.”

For David’s part, “I think they just went ‘fuck it’,” he says. “It’s not going to be commercially viable, the money they’d be spending and the money they’d get back, it’s not worth it.” His fees have never gone back down since the announcement, he says. Cities Without Houses membership increased again in 2024. 

Pure Fyre Festival stuff

I contacted Soho House to ask them about the cancellation, and to give them a chance to respond to members’ frustrations about fee increases. The press office acknowledged my email, asking if I could speak on the phone because they would “love to know what’s driving this piece as we announced this news last year.” I replied with my phone number saying lots of people in Glasgow still wondered what went wrong after such a promising start. I never heard from them again. 

“I get it, we’re not going to go to anybody and be like, ‘feel sorry for us, we dropped all this money on this thing we absolutely didn’t need… It’s not like someone being charged way over the odds for gas and electricity, which is obviously a very serious thing we should all be fuming about,” David told me. 

“But if you remove the exclusivity and luxury element, we were paying all this money for something that was never coming. It’s pure Fyre Festival stuff.”

A few months ago, the AC Marriott hotel announced it would open an events venue in the Collectors’ Hall building which had been earmarked for the ground floor of Glasgow’s Soho House. The rest of the space looks likely to become a bar or restaurant, following an alteration to its licence. Those desperate for a gym will have to make do with the hotel’s fitness room.

One evening while I was in the middle of reporting this story, my phone lit up with a message. It was a screenshot of a new email from one of the Soho House members I’d spoken to previously, alongside the message: “still nae Glasgow hoose.”

“Over the past year, we’ve worked to make your membership the best it can be,” the email read. “We’ve invested in refreshing many of our existing clubs [and] opened new Houses and facilities.”

“There will be a small increase in fees of our Cities Without Houses membership this year…there’s nothing you need to do – your membership will renew automatically.”

Thank you for reading Eve's piece.

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