WALLPAPER – THE WELL HAS BUILT A TRANQUIL RETREAT IN THE HEART OF UNION SQUARE, NYC

October 9, 2019

With the overwhelming boom of both wellness and members’ clubs, it should come as no surprise that one particularly elegant combination of both realms has become the talk of the town in New York City.

Newly opened this month, The Well, a membership-based club that creates integrated and personalised wellness plans for its members, touts an offering that professes to be the first of its kind. A union of both Western medicine and Eastern healing, the club’s programme features a best-in-class rota of wellness practitioners, fitness trainers and health coaches, who have come together to create a comprehensive approach to personal health.

Founded by Rebecca Parekh (the former COO for Deepak Chopra), Kane Sarhan, (formerly the head of brand at Starwood Capital Group and 1 Hotels) and Sarrah Hallock (previously in marketing for beverage brands including vitaminwater, Bai and WTRMLN WTR), The Well was conceived as a place where individuals could integrate health, well-being and the enjoyment of a destination luxury experience into one enticing package that busy urban professionals will be hard-pressed to resist.

‘The whole concept of the club is if you brought a destination spa to the city and brought together both Eastern and Western modalities in one place for holistic health and wellness,’ explains Sarhan. ‘It’s all with the feeling and service of a luxury membership club or five star hotel, so it’s actually a place you want to go and it doesn’t feel like work to take care of yourself.’

To this end, The Well has built a tranquil retreat right in the heart of Union Square. Designed by Liubasha Rose and spread over three floors, The Well provides members access to unlimited yoga, meditation and movement classes in its studio, access to the private training gym where signature, proprietary classes are offered, a reflexology room, steam room and sauna, as well as a ten-room spa with an extensive treatment menu that includes acupuncture, reiki, craniosacral, mysofacial, lymph drainage and deep tissue massage, amongst others. Each members’ wellness plan is overseen by a dedicated health coach during monthly one-on-one sessions, to ensure the best results and outcome, while a team of experts well-versed in areas including functional and integrative medicine, Chinese medicine, sports medicine and Ayurveda will uniquely communicate with each other to offer a holistic approach that takes every individual’s needs and goals to heart.

A boutique filled with practitioner-vetted beauty and wellness products sits by the entrance, while a café and restaurant from the team behind city favourite Café Clover is set to open shortly.

‘The city is so over-saturated and chaotic [that] we wanted to create a place where the minute you walk through the door, all of that melts away,’ says Rose, who created a feeling of continuity and positivity linking all of the club’s different areas. ‘The design is serene, with a soft color palate full of texture and then certain areas have moments where the club is in bloom with colour. It’s the balance of the tonal-to-vibrant that makes for a relaxing and engaging environment.’

‘We want to change the narrative and relationship around wellness,’ Sarhan concludes, revealing that two more locations (one more in New York and one in Los Angeles) are already in the works. ‘This club is our first step towards building a global brand that changes the way people think about their health.’