Step into the lobby of Lever House in Midtown Manhattan, and you're greeted by name. An elevator whisks you upward; moments after arrival, a staff member delivers your coffee exactly as you take it. Need a shave before a high-stakes Zoom call? A barber awaits. Later, you might wander into the shared lounge for an impromptu caviar tasting—all amid an interior of travertine, green marble, and glass, curated by a dedicated hospitality team intent on eliminating life's minor frictions.
This isn't a members-only club like Soho House or The Core Club. It's Industrious Reserve: a new tier of coworking space engineered exclusively for the C-suite. With memberships starting at $7,000 per person monthly—and $9,500 for one of just 44 private office suites—the Reserve reimagines executive workspace for an era of distributed leadership, offering what its creators call "the prestige of Park Avenue and the quiet luxury of a private club."
Beyond the Corner Office
The Reserve occupies the fifth and sixth floors of Lever House, the iconic 1952 modernist tower that once epitomized postwar corporate hierarchy—complete with its own corner offices for titans of industry. Today, that model is giving way to something more fluid. As Industrious President Anna Squires Levine explains, today's executives don't want to sign decade-long leases and manage Wi-Fi infrastructure. They want to "show up and feel like a boss"—with none of the operational overhead.
This shift reflects bigger changes in how power operates in the modern workplace. According to Todd Heiser, principal at design firm Gensler, contemporary leadership demands proximity without pretense: a space where CEOs can rapidly assemble trusted advisers for lightning-fast decisions, yet remain culturally present. Think Logan Roy's war room in *Succession* or Rebecca Welton's office in *Ted Lasso*—spaces that function as both character and command center.
The Capitalist Situation Room
Where mid-century office design emphasized rigid hierarchy through corner offices and closed doors, today's power dynamics are signaled through access and adjacency. With shrinking office footprints eliminating lavish private suites for all but the most senior leaders, the executive workspace has evolved into what Heiser calls a "capitalist situation room": intimate, agile, and engineered for alignment.
Industrious Reserve embodies this duality. Its design—crafted in-house—fuses physical elegance, seamless technology, and white-glove service to create what Levine describes as a "secret, top-floor, light-filled brownstone in the middle of New York." Executives can retreat to a private suite for confidential strategy sessions, then step into semi-public club areas for networking or larger gatherings—all within a building whose slender frame allows afternoon sun to wash across the entire floorplate, a rarity in Manhattan's canyon-like skyline.
Who's Signing Up?
Early interest has clustered among private equity and venture capital firms, hedge funds, and luxury retail and fashion houses. Many are headquartered elsewhere but need a Manhattan foothold; others lead fully distributed teams and crave a central node for in-person collaboration. Levine expects the limited inventory of offices and memberships to sell out before the spring opening—and plans are already underway to replicate the model in global "pinnacle cities" including Singapore, Tokyo, and Berlin.
Yet expansion will be deliberate. "It takes a very special building and a very special landlord partner to make it happen," Levine notes. With Industrious recently acquired by real estate giant CBRE, the Reserve concept signals a broader bet: that the future of elite work isn't about owning real estate—it's about curating experience. In an age of remote work and fluid teams, the ultimate luxury isn't square footage. It's time—honored to a razor's edge, served with caviar on the side.