Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Cape Town Club steps back into its former glory days
THIS time last year, the Cape Town Club was down on its luck.
“Gentlemen’s club hits the skids,” read one headline at the time, describing the club as “hopelessly illiquid” and facing financial ruin “against a backdrop of internal ructions” and years of below-par membership fees.
Now, the club is back with a new business plan – and an old venue.
Next month, it will be coming home to 18 Queen Victoria Street, next to the Western Cape High Court, 16 years after it left the same venue to move to Leinster Hall.
“We had a tough time for about a year,” club board member Peter Sole said of the Leinster Hall woes, blaming “dissident forces” within the membership.
They got through that year by attracting new members and cutting costs. Sole said those membership numbers (price on request) had doubled and Leinster Hall was sold.
It’s an ironic homecoming: financial difficulties drove the club from Victoria Road in the first place.
But the club is approaching things differently this time.
Part of the financial recovery plan involves opening the club to the public on weekends as an event venue for hire.
They also hope the club’s new central location will make it attractive to inner city professionals, particularly lawyers from the courts up the road.
But it’s not just about membership.
“For a club like us to function, we have to have a commercial side to sell,” said secre- tary Gary Rockliffe-Fidler.
“We cock our hat to tradition, but the city is growing and vibrant and we need to be in the centre of it. It’s where our members work.”
The club will stage a ceremonial walk from Leinster Hall to its new venue just over a kilometre away next Sunday.
Then, on June 12, it will host Judge Dennis Davis, who will give the inaugural Colin Eglin Memorial Lecture, in memory of the former club president and long-time opposition politician during apartheid, who died last year.
On June 28 a gala dinner will be held to officially open the Cape Town Club in its new venue.
But there’s a lot to do before then. The Victoria Room on the ground floor is filled with the left-over debris of an event the night before, but its walls have been restored from a putrid turquoise – the result of years of film shoot renovations – to a gleaming white.
The Billiards Room is being overhauled from a baby blue to a rich purple, and the dining room chairs for the restaurant, QV18, have just arrived.
The bar is a cluster of old furniture, but the wall panels are original and the portrait of the club’s first chairman – Sir Thomas Fuller, 1878 to 1898 – has already been hung over the fireplace.
High ceilings, wooden floors, fireplaces, full- size snooker tables, craft beer on tap and a customised cocktail menu and fine dining – it’s a Herbert Baker creation, designed for colonial comfort, revamped for a new generation.
To arrange a visit, contact the club on administration @capetownclub.org.za.