Feb 10 2013 - Inside the exclusive Grand Havana cigar club where members Alec Baldwin and Laurence Fishburne mingle with the political elite
Welcome to the Grand Havana Room - where members including Hollywood royalty, pro-athletes and Wall Street hotshots all puff on the finest cigars. The exclusive, members-only club is situated in the penthouse of 666 Fifth Avenue, a post-modern tower in midtown Manhattan which sold for $1.8billion in 2006, making it the most expensive office building in the U.S.
Among members are Alec Baldwin and Laurence Fishburne - who both sit on the board - while Reverend Al Sharpton and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani have been spotted behind its glass doors. The board of governors at the club is overseen by former Citigroup CEO Richard Parsons.
Despite the name, the Grand Havana Room does not sell Cuban cigars but does have dozens of varieties from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Geneva on offer in its Humidor Vault. Spread over 17,000 square feet, the club offers a full bar to members along with lunch and dinner menus on weekdays and dinner on Saturday.
If members tire of enjoying an expansive range of the finest cigars and classic cocktails, they can catch up on financial dealings in the business center or enjoy a game of cards or backgammon in a private suite. If members find that business brings them to the West Coast, they can hole up at Grand Havana's sister club in Beverly Hills. Access to Grand Havana's prestigious confines does come at a price - more than 15 years ago, Cigar Aficionado magazine estimated the fees at $3,000 to join then $200 a month, according to
Business Insider.
Grand Havana Room Official Site
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Becoming a member is not easy, and not cheap. The New York venue has about 900 members (the smaller Beverly Hills site has about 650) and membership is by invitation only and limited. “The waiting list is very long,” Shuster says. “The attrition rate is very low at both clubs. We pretty much only allow a new member when a member leaves, and we don’t lose very many members.” That means “about five to seven members a year, and we have maybe 100 waiting,” he says. Applications are reviewed by an advisory board, “and references from an existing member are very important,” because they allow the board to get a sense of who the applicant is. The membership is “eclectic” and disparate, he says. “The mix is really good. Our club represents New York very well.” The cost? There are three levels – corporate membership in New York has a $17,500 initial fee and $900 a month dues; an individual, private N.Y.C. membership is $7,500 and $325, and a shared membership, which essentially means a shared humidor, is $5,000 and $275.
The Grand Havana Room designed as refuge for the likes of Jordan Belfort, self-styled Wolf of Wall Street, who recalled in his memoir that “it was where Masters of the Universe could get blitzed on martinis and exchange war stories.” At the beginning of 2007 the stock market, bloated with funny money, was inflating the value of everything and it was at that moment, on Jared Kushner’s birthday, Jan. 10, that the Kushner companies paid Tishman Speyer $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Ave.—almost twice as much, per square foot, as anyone had ever paid for a building in Manhattan. Within a few months the world’s economies crashed, due largely to those Masters of the Universe partying inside 666.
Grand Havana Club NY
Grand Havana Club Beverly Hills - A cigar club rather than a cigar bar, it has been a celebrity hangout since it opened in the mid-Nineties. The Grand Havana is the place to see the much-loved but endangered species: the cigar-chomping Hollywood titan. Among those who have been spotted here are
Jack Nicholson (the patron saint of Hollywood cigar smokers),
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Bruce Willis and
Danny De Vito. Although the cigar list boasts Partagás and Cohiba, these are not the Cuban ‘originals’ – Havanas have been illegal in the US since the Sixties.
Tourist Photo from Yelp with Skull on Cigar Box
Rudy Giuliani