Edison House, Salt Lake’s new private social club, opens its doors

The last seven months have blown by fast at Edison House.

In May, the new private social club at 335 S. 200 West in downtown Salt Lake City, opened its membership to the public — and the waiting list quickly grew to 3,000 people deep.

The ownership had planned to open the club in September, but didn’t receive its liquor license until November.

After a soft opening in which it hosted a few parties, the club swung open its doors on Dec. 5.

“We have just been rocking and rolling ever since then,” said Lauren Boyack, the club’s head of membership.

Boyack said brothers Charlie Cardon and George Cardon-Bystry, the club’s co-founders, spent four years developing the club “from concept to fruition.” The global firm HKS Architects, which has an office in Salt Lake City, designed the building; Los Angeles-based Avenue Design did the interiors. Construction took 18 months, she said.

The building is three stories and 30,000 square feet, but “there’s a lot of intimacy folded into the design of the club,” Boyack said. “There’s no cavernous spaces, just lots of little breakaway areas.”

Membership, if one is accepted through the application process and pay the $500 onboarding fee, is $225 a month for Utah residents, and $175 a month for “The Traveler” membership (for people living out of state). Members’ life partners get a discount — $100 for Utahns (plus a $100 onboarding fee), and $50 for out-of-towners.

Entering the building, members check into the club in the foyer, and then enter The Lounge, which Boyack said is a good place for co-working, with lots of places to plug in and find a quiet space to work on a laptop.

The first-floor bar space separates The Lounge and the club’s fine dining restaurant, Society. The restaurant is overseen by chef Buzz Willey, the former chef-owner of Pallet, and there’s also a private dining room members can book.

On the second floor, you step into the club’s second restaurant, The Atrium, which Boyack described as an elevated sports bar concept. There’s also a private karaoke lounge with a ceiling hung with disco balls, which can be booked by members through the Edison House app.

In the billiards room, people can take vinyl records, from Bob Marley to Taylor Swift, off the wall display and play them; they were chosen by founding members. “We asked all of our founders to pick a record or a book that was meaningful to them,” Boyack said, “so that library is housed there.”

The Jazz Parlor features lush green velvet walls and floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains, which can be closed to make the space more intimate. The room features a button you can push to order champagne.

At the center is a hand-painted piano, where you’ll sometimes find Cardon-Bystry at the keys. “He’s a very talented pianist,” Boyack said.

In the next room, The Speakeasy Bar also features “these lush, plush walls,” Boyack said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s also super-intentional for sound dampening. There are so many different spaces here that have separate musical acts going on at the same time. That’s why we have these tufted dropped ceilings — it’s one of the more complex elements of the design.”

The space, she said, hosts tons of events. “We talk about Edison House as a concept in three parts,” Boyack said. “We have the clubhouse, we have the community and then we also have experiences. So our head of member experiences is charged with booking one or two unique programs to happen every single day of the year. We just want things to be really fresh and dynamic.”

So far, the Speakeasy space has hosted a local comedy showcase, an “All-out Decades DJ night” featuring record spins from the ‘80s through the early 2000s, and the Will Baxter Band jazz quartet.

“Music is a pretty significant thread at Edison House,” she said, adding that the club also aims to host TED Talks and other programming that’s not just fun, but can be challenging.

Upstairs on the third floor in The Ballroom — which is one room that anyone can rent, not just members —the club hosts Monday Mantra, a yoga class. The club also operates a weight room on the first floor and a cardio room on the second floor, which members can access as early as 5 a.m., before the club opens at 8 a.m.

Also on the top floor is the Sky Lounge, an open-air terrace with a pool, a rooftop bar and an outdoor projection screen. “We’ll do movies in the summer,” Boyack said.

The third floor also features 18-foot-high, floor-to-ceiling pocket doors — which were hoisted up via a crane during construction — which they will open during warm weather, making the whole floor a hybrid indoor/outdoor space.

The deck also features perforated shades that accordion all the way down the building to the second floor, so natural light can be integrated into the building to warm things up during the winter, and to create shade and allow in breezes in during the summer to cool things down.

Boyack said it’s been a long and sometimes intense process to open the club — especially the suspense around whether or not they’d be one of the establishments to receive one of the few available liquor licenses this year — but that things have been busy and vibrant so far.

“I came on board basically from the day we broke ground,” she said. “So I’ve been around a minute, and I’ve seen it grow. So it’s exciting to actually be able to walk through the club in real time with people, rather than just showing the renderings.”

Edison House is still accepting membership applications — you can apply through the website, https://edisonhouseslc.typeform.com/apply. To rent the ballroom as a non-member, contact the head of private events by calling 385-799-7630, or sending an email to info@edisonhouseslc.com.

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