Playboy has agreed to purchase the Freehand Hotel in Miami Beach for 12.5 million dollars with the aim of transforming it into a high-end private membership club, the first to operate under that brand in the United States since it closed its last establishment in 1988, according to documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission of that country.
The sales agreement was signed at the beginning of November, and the closing of the transaction is scheduled for December 15. The seller is the London-based hotel chain Generator, which has owned the property since 2012.
The Freehand, built in 1936, is a collection of five historic buildings with 89 rooms located on Indian Creek Drive and 27th Street, known for its tropical atmosphere, gardens, and, above all, the Broken Shaker bar, one of the most renowned in the city.
Playboy will contribute approximately 5 million dollars from its own balance sheet for the project and expects to recoup that investment through the sale of memberships to the new club. For the development and operation of the establishment, the company has signed agreements with two partners specialized in hospitality: Think Hospitality and Infinity Collective, who will also invest in the project.
The CEO of Playboy, Ben Kohn, described the property as approximately one acre of land and referred to it as a key element of the company's hospitality strategy. So far, membership prices, entry requirements, and the opening date of the club have not been disclosed.
One of the questions raised by the project is the future of the Broken Shaker. The agreement stipulates that the current contract for the bar will be terminated before or during the closing of the operation, although its final destiny has not yet been confirmed.
The Miami Beach commissioner Joseph Magazine celebrated the investment with optimism. “Playboy will rehabilitate and revitalize” the property, he stated, and “will respect the historical fabric of the building and the neighborhood.” The official, who is also the president of the city’s finance committee, added that “South Florida remains an attractive location for lifestyle and hospitality capital investments.”
The project is the culmination of a broader strategy that the brand announced in August 2025, when it communicated the relocation of its global corporate headquarters from Los Angeles to Miami Beach, with offices in the penthouse of the Rivani building on Michigan Avenue near Lincoln Road, under an 11-year lease with an initial rent of approximately $2.1 million annually. As of September 30, 2026, the company had not yet moved to that headquarters nor had it received the $200,000 in approved municipal incentives, due to not meeting the required hiring threshold.
The return of Playboy to Miami Beach has a significant historical component. The brand has previously had a presence in the city: in 1961, it opened a club on Biscayne Boulevard, and in 1970, Hugh Hefner invested 15 million dollars to transform an old Hilton into the Playboy Plaza Hotel on Collins Avenue, featuring 468 rooms and Bunny waitresses. That hotel was sold in 1974 and is now the Castle Beach Club.
At its peak, the Playboy club chain operated up to 22 establishments simultaneously with around 750,000 members nationwide, before the decline began in the mid-1970s. The last U.S. club closed in Lansing, Michigan, in July 1988, marking the end of nearly three decades of private clubs under that brand.
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