On Columbia Heights, crews have spent months finishing out seven floors inside Panorama Brooklyn's residential tower at 50 Columbia Heights, across the street from Hillside Dog Park. A ten-minute walk south on Clark Street, the block that once held the largest hotel in New York City is being reworked again, this time into 52,000 square feet of pools and courts. Both projects get called family clubs. Neither has opened. And the two amenity lists read like they were drafted for two different households.
The Beginning Clubhouse and Kings Athletic Club show up together in nearly every local roundup, filed under the same headline, as if the neighborhood is choosing between two versions of the same idea. Look at what's actually inside each building and the choice isn't about which club is nicer. Beginning is built for parents who need someone to watch the kids while they work a few hours, then want dinner without arranging a sitter first. Kings is built for families who already have a sport and want their kids doing it in the same building, on the same afternoon.
What's landing at Panorama
The Beginning Clubhouse takes 45,000 square feet over seven floors of 50 Columbia Heights, inside the Panorama Brooklyn complex. It's the first location for Little Big Hospitality, the company behind founders Michael Schoen and Chris de Koos, and the flagship for a concept they've said they eventually want to run in multiple cities. The floor plan splits the day by task. Dedicated floors handle supervised childcare, play spaces, and game rooms. A separate floor is built for the adults who dropped the kids off there, with meeting rooms and a quiet library for work, plus a fitness center and spa. Food runs the length of the day: a casual café and lounge, a full-service fine dining restaurant, an adults-only dining room, and a rooftop with views toward the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge. Interiors come from James Thurstan Waterworth, who spent years designing spaces for Soho House before taking this project on.
What's landing at the Hotel St. George
Ten minutes south, Kings Athletic Club is taking over 52,000 square feet inside the Hotel St. George complex, at 43 Clark Street, though some listings still reference its 111 Hicks Street entrance for the same building. The block has carried a pool before. When the Hotel St. George operated at full scale in the early twentieth century, it held what was billed at the time as the largest saltwater swimming pool in the country, inside a hotel large enough to be considered the biggest in New York City. A century later, Kings is putting a pool back into that footprint, alongside two tennis courts, pickleball, squash, golf simulators, a climbing wall, a half basketball court, yoga and Pilates studios, saunas, cold plunges, and babysitters on staff for the kids who aren't old enough for a court yet. The space was most recently occupied by Eastern Athletic Club. Kings is developed by SC Holdings and East Gate Investors.
| The Beginning Clubhouse | Kings Athletic Club | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 50 Columbia Heights, Panorama Brooklyn | 43 Clark Street (also listed as 111 Hicks Street), Hotel St. George |
| Size | 45,000 sq ft, 7 floors | 52,000 sq ft |
| Backed by | Little Big Hospitality (Michael Schoen, Chris de Koos) | SC Holdings, East Gate Investors |
| Signature amenities | Supervised childcare floors, coworking library, fine dining, adults-only dining room, rooftop | Pool, two tennis courts, squash, pickleball, golf simulators, climbing wall |
| Status as of September 2026 | Build-out underway; original target was summer 2026 | Soft opening underway; site still reads "coming soon," booking portal live |
| Membership pricing | Not officially published | Not published |
The number that keeps moving
If you've heard a membership figure attached to either club, it's worth checking which club it actually belongs to. The earliest reporting on the Beginning Clubhouse, from the summer of 2025, described an expected structure of roughly $300 a month for adults and $200 for children, on top of an initiation fee. By this September, the figure attached to the same club had grown to around $400 a month per adult and $250 per child, with a $5,000 initiation fee, and was still described as reported rather than published. Kings hasn't put out a number of its own. Local reporting has been direct about this: the figures circulating for Kings actually belong to a different club entirely, and anyone budgeting around them is budgeting around the wrong membership.
Two definitions of family time
The clearest way to tell these clubs apart isn't the price, since neither has published one. It's the assumption built into each floor plan. Beginning treats family time as something scheduled around work: drop the kids on a childcare floor, take a meeting on the coworking floor, eat dinner without a search for a sitter. Kings treats family time as something already scheduled around a sport: a climbing wall, two tennis courts, and squash don't function as childcare backup, they function as a program for a kid who's already playing something, in a building where a parent can get a set of doubles in first.
Neither model is better suited to Brooklyn Heights than the other. They're built for different weeks, not different price points on the same week, and a family choosing between them is choosing a rhythm, not a rate card.
What's confirmed heading into fall
- The Beginning Clubhouse: 50 Columbia Heights, across from Hillside Dog Park. Membership applications are open; pricing is still unpublished and any number you've heard should be treated as unconfirmed.
- Kings Athletic Club: 43 Clark Street, inside the Hotel St. George complex. The club's own site still says "coming soon," but its booking portal is live, and its opening amenities include a pool, tennis, squash, and a climbing wall.
Once either club publishes its own membership rates, residents will have a real number to set against the second club's when it follows.
If you're watching how buildings like Panorama Brooklyn and the Hotel St. George keep finding new uses for their square footage, that's exactly the kind of neighborhood detail Jarrod Duncan tracks closely. Let's Connect.
