Looks like Goa is warming up to the private members’ club

Until I decamped to Goa five years ago, I had always looked at the small coastal state as a stop-gap destination. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, upending the lines between work and play, and like thousands of others, I took it as a sign to turn susegado into a permanent lifestyle. Soon, at beach shacks and cocktail bars, I was seeing familiar faces—city-bred folks who had a collective epiphany and were now tied together by their exhaustion toward big-city life.

In the years that lapsed, more and more floating residents started seeking Goan pincodes, coercing sleepy neighborhoods into assuming a shiny, gentrified personality. Peel its tropical backdrop, and north Goa, like its new residents, reveals a microcosm of city life today.

That seemed to be the mood when I walked into Solene, a new private members’ club housed within a 115-year-old Portuguese house in Moira. The tastefully done-up space, which opens its doors this month, is the latest offering by real estate giants Isprava Group, which started warming cityfolk to the idea of a second home in 2016 and until a few years ago had a monopoly over luxury villas across Goa.

A lush walkway leads to the balcao—Goa’s beloved porch—as well as an outdoor garden area that will soon transform into Nariyal, Solene’s in-house restaurant—also open to non-members—which will whip up a coastal-inspired menu, overseen by Passcode Hospitality’s Rakshay Dhariwal.

Inside, a narrow neon-lit hallway makes up the reception, beyond which lies the club’s bar and lounge area, swathed in red and gold accents. Next door is more seating, this time inside a sunlit glasshouse à la The Second House, Saligao’s buzzy eatery, dotted with couches and foliage. It leads outdoors to a breezy patio—another space for dining and seating. Right across is a fitness centre armed with a compact gym and a sauna—an area that ends right as it begins.

Solene has a relaxed design that is evident through a space that boasts of high ceilings, ornate woodwork and tiles that date back to 1910, alongside finds from vintage markets and bespoke buys.

Unlike city clubs, where private meeting rooms and co-working spaces are the most coveted, Solene is built for the socially ambitious who like to unwind, not work. Isprava’s executive director and co-CEO, Dhimaan Shah, says the space was intended to gather a roster of culturally inclined, creative-minded people under one roof—except the anchor isn’t sport or the newest coffee import but a sense of community.

His blueprint for the Moira club lay in the artistic appeal of neighbourhoods such as Soho and Chelsea in New York. So, unlike your grandparents’ old-guard clubs, there are no stuffy house rules here. The dress code at Solene can be shorts and Birkenstock on any given day. The Isprava team also knows well that Goa has no dearth of swimming pools, so, instead, they have made place at Solene for something more de rigueur: an outdoor pickleball court, which will occasionally double up as a venue for yoga and meditation sessions.

All Isprava homeowners and their families are automatically members of the club. The decision to open Solene in Moira, as Shah tells me, is tied to the fact that “within two to 20 minutes,” Isprava has “about 200 projects”. For these members, Solene will be an added curation to their existing lifestyle, somewhat of an exclusive spot to meet friends and share a drink.

For everyone else—expats, creatives, locals, and out-of-towners—Solene’s amenities and programming (think wine-tasting sessions, Urdu poetry evenings) come at a cost. Currently, membership here is priced at ₹1,20,000 plus taxes per year—and members can invite up to four guests into the space besides availing the full range of amenities and experiences.

As screenwriter and Moira resident Niren Bhavanani points out, the club’s novelty may be in bringing such amenities to his neighbourhood. “The closest gym from Moira or Aldona is at least a 20-minute drive away. With Solene opening, accessing a gym becomes easier,” he adds.

Spread over 20,000 sqft, Solene may be a new addition to Moira, but gilded, old-school members’ clubs, varying in price point and amenities, such as the Panjim Gymkhana and Clube Tennis de Gaspar Dias, have always been around. At Panjim Gymkhana, members can avail of amenities such as tennis and badminton courts, a swimming pool, rooms, and now, eating at Janot, the new restaurant run by chef Avinash Martins.

Perhaps Solene’s closest comparison would be Club de Palma, a 30,000 sqft private members’ club nestled within the luxurious complex of Aldeia De Goa in Bambolim, with membership priced at ₹2,00,000 a year. Further north, there is the Baale Private Members Club, which opened in Arpora two years ago. Housed within a bespoke private pool villa resort, the club comes equipped with squash courts, a 25-metre-lap pool, and luxe spa services. To put things in perspective, membership was priced at ₹1,75,000 plus taxes per annum when it began operations.

For musician Sahej Bakshi, who goes by the stage name Dualist Inquiry and moved to Goa back in 2018, the era of members’ clubs feels like the sign of Goa’s rapidly changing identity. “The idea of a members’ club is inherently a city thing because in cities spaces are anyway limited, so it’s nice to have such clubs [and amenities]. But in Goa, something like this would have been inconceivable even five years ago.”

That’s certainly not the case today. Bakshi agrees that an exclusive members-only club, if done thoughtfully, could allow creatives a viable opportunity to expand their network. “People tend to be quite social [in Goa] because it’s not the same pace as city life. I could see a lot of people probably going for it,” he adds. There are already whispers of nouveau members-only clubs like Soho House making inroads into Goa in the coming future. Gurgaon’s 32nd Avenue Milestone group too is scouting locations, and Anjuna’s Mansion Haus is preparing to open a private members’ club later this year. For the rest of us, though, there’s always the beach.