The University Club in Phoenix has closed. It was home to Arizona's movers and shakers for years

A generation or two ago, Phoenix was home to a handful of so-called private, membership-only lunch clubs.

“There was the old Arizona Club, downtown at the VNB building, there was the old Arizona Club uptown, there was the Cloud Club and, of course, there was the University Club," said Barry Aarons, a former president of the University Club and longtime Arizona lobbyist.

But now, the historic University Club located near the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix has closed. Founded in 1965, they just couldn’t attract enough younger people to join the members-only club, according to Aarons.

For decades, if you couldn’t find Aarons in his bow tie at the state Capital, you might find him taking a state senator out to lunch at the University Club — a place where a who’s who of Arizona movers and shakers have dined over the years.

Clubs like these are probably more common on the East Coast. And that’s where Aarons told The Show he first got a taste of what it would be like to go to a club like this.

Nick Sanchez/KJZZ

Full conversation

BARRY AARONS: I think you can go back to the fact that so many people here are transplants from the East Coast where these clubs were very, very in vogue starting in the 19th century and then going all the way through the 20th century. And as I mentioned to you when we were chatting earlier, one of the reasons I was so excited to join the club was when I was a little boy. My father was a member of the Harvard Club.

He had graduated from Harvard Law School and that was one of his one luxuries that he could be a member of that club. And he would wander down there from his office in downtown New York about once a week and have a nice little lunch and take a little nap and then he could go back to work for several hours and a couple of times a year for special events, birthday concert, something like that, he would bring me down there and let me go to lunch with him there and I would revel in that and I would say to myself, "wow, maybe someday I can be a member of a club like this."

And then in 1975, 50 years ago, a very good friend of mine who was a fairly prominent attorney, although relatively young, said, “you know, you're building yourself a kind of a public policy presence and so on, you really need to be a member of the club, and I think you should join The University Club.” And he sponsored me and I joined the club, so I'd been a member for 50 years when we shut it down, which was kind of sad to think about.

LAUREN GILGER: So it's the kind of place that politicians will have a lunch. You get a lot of movers and shakers in this place over the years, right?

AARONS: A lot of things. I mean, it really was a community treasure, in my opinion. You had a lot of politicians who would go there to have lunches. I hosted many legislators and others for lunch when we had things to discuss over a meal. And it was, different organizations and groups. The Trial Lawyers Association had their continuing education classes there and had annual meetings there. And I could go through a list of different types of community, political, educational organizations — and a lot of great camaraderie.

I remember — God, I don't remember the year — but I remember after the Martin Luther King [Jr.] bill had been vetoed by Gov. [Evan] Mecham about a year or so later, I remember Bill Shover hosting a meeting at The University Club of a bunch of lobbyists, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Wayne Anderson, and a couple of others and said we have to get that back on the ballot so that we can get it passed because we need to have it done. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is we want to still bid on a Super Bowl, we're never going to get that. That's a very important economic mover and shaker for us. So that's kind of one of the meetings that started that process to where we ultimately got it passed.

GILGER: Yeah, so some important moments have happened there.

AARONS: No question.

GILGER: Some important members over the years. Can you tell us some big names?

AARONS: Well, Bill Shover, who, you know, when you mentioned Bill Shover, for those of us of my age, you think the Arizona Republic, Phoenix Gazette. Now the Phoenix Gazette been dead for a long time, but, but, I mean, you had, you had members of Congress, you had legislators, I remember seeing Sandra Day O'Connor when she was majority leader of the Arizona state Senate, and she would go there, and Burton Barr when he was majority leader of the House, I mean, I could go through a list of names that would take us all day to get through.

The point of the matter is many of them were also members of the Arizona Club, so if you’d go up to the top floor of the Valley National Bank building, you might see them there. You might go to The University Club and see them there. You might go to the Cloud Club, at the old Del Webb townhouse, which was on Clarendon and Central Avenue, you might see them there. I mean, I go through the whole list. It was more popular in those days to have membership.

Problem is, younger people are not enticed to have that same desire to be a member of a private club. They're more interested in what's the newest and kind of neatest new restaurant on the park.

GILGER: Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you. Like why do you think this is kind of a relic of a bygone era? Like it reminds me of a time when politics were different, right, when you know, you hear stories about politicians from both sides of the aisle not hating each other, getting a beer after the session's over, that kind of thing.

Is it the political spectrum that's changed? Is it the culture?

AARONS: I think it's the culture more than the political spectrum. I will, as a lobbyist, I will tell you that most of us in the lobbying profession have no problem and get along well with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and they know I might be a Republican and my friend might be a Democrat. But 90% of all issues really aren't partisan issues, but that's not what caused it.

What caused it was the fact that younger generations found more interest in going to newer, more hip places to eat. And, and then of course, you know, more recently you had COVID, which almost killed us and yet also saved us because we qualified for some PPP loans and so on and so forth and Maricopa County loan and it gave us a little blood.

But even after that, then the number of people who were actually doing meetings at lunch where you'd actually sit down with somebody and break bread. That's something that is not, well, if you can do it on Zoom in your pajamas eating a peanut butter sandwich, why would you want to go out of the house?

GILGER: What do you think is lost there though?

AARONS: Community. I think community is lost. I think building interpersonal relationships are lost. I think that some of the history of, of how we have gone about things over the years is lost. So it's unfortunate. I don't know what has really taken its place, you know, ever since COVID, I can't get people to go to in-person meetings.

I mean, I spent, my Zoom account is the most important account I have right now, you know, next to the internet, and it's very difficult to entice people to go. Now, there still are a lot that did it. I mentioned to you when I came in that I just finished lunch with the state senator and, and that's a normal thing for me to do and, and so on, but, but a lot of them don't want to do that anymore.

GILGER: So I wonder the other side of this, right, because it is kind of a relic of a bygone era, and there are some good things and bad things about that. But I mean maybe there is another side here. Like do you think we are more egalitarian without places like this? Was there a members-only thing that was too exclusive?

AARONS: Possibly. I'm not sure if it's the egalitarian aspect of it or the fact that a lot of people in the younger generation say, "Why should I have to pay $100 a month in dues to get lunch when I could go to an equally good luncheon establishment and not have to pay that?"

I think a lot of that has to do with it. I think there is some difference in personality of younger generations behind mine about, you know, exclusive clubs and so on. It paints some pictures that some people might not like. So I think there were a lot of factors. There was no one thing. There was no one event, not even COVID.

There was no one event that unfortunately forced the closing University Club. It was just the fact that we just desperately could not attract enough new membership to keep the doors open, and we could not attract enough walk-in traffic to keep the doors open. And we got to the point where we finally just had to say, "that's it, we're done."

GILGER: That's sad, right? How'd you feel about it?

AARONS: Very sad, very sad. I mean, you know, you get to a point where you get used to doing certain things a certain way and however, it wasn't like a sudden death. We all, we've been struggling for years.

GILGER: OK, so leave us with a favorite memory of yours from that place that was so special to you.

AARONS: You know, there, there are so many. My daughter Deborah, who's my oldest child, had her bat mitzvah reception on the lawn in the back, in 1988, you know, and those are one of those life moments that you can't forget about.

But by the same token, my youngest son, Jared, had his ASU graduation party at the University Club, and those are the ones that I say, God, having had the opportunity to be able to host an event like that at my club just made it that much more special to me. Not sure it made it that much more special to them, but it certainly made it more special to me.