Jack Penrod, Nikki Beach Founder, Dead at 85

This week, news broke that Jack Penrod, founder of Nikki Beach, died on Monday, February 3, at age 85. He had been battling cancer.

It's hard to put into words how much Penrod helped reshape Miami Beach's image from a retiree community into a global hot spot. In 1988, he opened Penrod's Beach Club on Ocean Drive in South Beach, long before the area would become a trendy destination. However, in 1997, Penrod experienced one of the biggest tragedies a parent can face when his 18-year-old daughter Nicole died in a car accident. To honor her, Penrod founded Nikki Beach (then called Café Nikki) the following year at Penrod's Beach Club and turned it into a global brand.

Nikki Beach now has locations in St. Tropez, Marbella, and Dubai, among others. (At one point, Nikki Beach even had a short-lived outpost in Coconut Grove.)

His venture into South Florida nightlife began in the mid-'80s in Fort Lauderdale, where his clubs hosted thousands of college kids on spring break. That would ultimately be his undoing, as city officials quickly tired of the debauchery associated with the annual ritual.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Penrod set his sights on South Beach. In 1986, he and his brothers Chuck and Bob opened a concession stand at 14th Street. Eventually, they signed an agreement with the City of Miami Beach that gave them exclusive control of all commercial operations on the public beach from 14th Street all the way down to Government Cut.
Penrod had also signed a deal to operate the site at 1 Ocean Dr., first as Penrod's Beach Club and later as Nikki Beach. The lease agreement required the venue to make annual payments to the city, which currently amount to 6.5 percent of gross receipts.

With Nikki Beach, Penrod built a dayclub that was as chic as the "American Riviera" label South Beach earned in the Nineties. Celebrity-spotting was a regular pastime, as Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Harrison Ford all stopped in over the decades.

At the same time, the South of Fifth neighborhood was changing, as increasing numbers of well-heeled residents moved in. The new residents also began to demand that the many nightclubs in the area pipe down or shut down. A 2 a.m. curfew the city imposed South of Fifth in 2023 killed venues like the nearby Story nightclub, which operated in a location that had been a haven for revelers since the early Nineties. Over the years, Nikki Beach had attempted to address its own noise issues to avoid a similar fate.

Matters appeared to come to a head later that year when the City of Miami Beach entered into a no-bid agreement with Boucher Brothers to replace Nikki Beach starting in May 2026. The beach concession company partnered with Major Food Group — parent of Carbone, Contessa, and Sadelle's, among other concepts — in a joint venture to revamp the site with a beach club and restaurant, having agreed to pay the city $50 million over the ten-year term of the deal.

Penrod and his wife, Lucia, unsuccessfully attempted to block the agreement, arguing that the Boucher Brothers deal didn't constitute a concession agreement but rather a lease agreement, which would require a voter referendum. (Earlier, the city had rejected Nikki Beach's bid, claiming it had missed the deadline to file it.)

That said, while Nikki Beach's days are numbered on Miami Beach, Jack Penrod's impact on the city will be felt long after it's gone.