In the 1963 hit “Surfin’ USA,” the Beach Boys sang, “If everybody had an ocean/ Across the U.S.A./ Then everybody’d be surfin’/ Like Californ-i-a.” Brian Wilson didn’t know it, but he summed up exactly what real estate developers and venture capitalists are betting on in 2025: a perfect wave wherever you live.
Four new California surf park proposals have emerged so far this year, with three others already in various stages of development, highlighting what could be a glut of new artificial waves in the coming years.
Just last month, investment firm Toba Capital and financier and former tech CEO Vinny Smith shelled out $54 million in hopes of replicating the success of the Palm Springs Surf Club.
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The group acquired 9 acres in the forthcoming Los Angeles Chargers campus in El Segundo. Formerly earmarked for office and residential use, the proposed wave pool would join a Porsche test-driving experience center and a Topgolf nearby.
The wavepool project doesn’t have a timeline yet.
The next decade will define the success of these often criticized, mightily expensive projects. And many of these parks aren’t just trying to attract current surfers — they’re hoping to capture a new generation while taking enthusiasts and spectators along for the ride.
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A growing $4B industry
In 2015, Kelly Slater, the 11-time World Surf League champion, rode the first wave at his namesake Surf Ranch in Lemoore, patenting new technology he developed with a USC aerospace and mechanical engineering associate professor.
Positioned off I-5, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it has played host to the best surfers in the world. In the middle of California’s agricultural fields, visiting Surf Ranch requires a private rental or an invitation, which have in the past gone to celebrities such as Prince Harry, Matthew McConaughey and Ivanka Trump. Pricing isn’t publicly available, but estimates put daily rentals between $50,000 and $70,000, or an hourly cost of nearly $900 per person.
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The new technology pioneered by one of the biggest celebrity surfers showed that a surf playground could be for serious surfers — often with serious money — who wanted to re-create the best of the ocean far away from the water itself.
But when the Palm Springs Surf Club opened in 2024, it took a much different approach to the artificial surfing experience. The high-end space includes a lazy river, cabanas, restaurants and bars, positioned to attract the casual Palm Springs tourist just as much as the wave-starved inland surfer.
At least 10 surf parks and facilities are open throughout the United States, mostly along the country’s coasts, and more than 30 are open globally, with over 200 either under construction or in various phases of development. It’s an industry valued at $4 billion, according to trade association Surf Park Central, and estimates project that the industry could grow as much as 20% annually. Growth has skyrocketed 289% from 2020 to 2025, with an average year-over-year growth of around 130% in the past decade.
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Capitalizing on the experience economy
The surf park trend has grown so big, it has its own media outlet and a trade association tracking news in the industry. Wave Pool Mag debuted in 2018, founded by surf journalist Bryan Dickerson, who began obsessively tracking wave pool projects globally on a map. He hosts people in the industry on his podcast and also publishes news articles and reports. Dickerson doesn’t see wave pools as a fad. Instead, he believes the activity may one day be as ubiquitous for surfers as it is for those who go to a gym to work out. “At some point, it will shift and people will treat it like a gym, but we’re not there yet,” he said.
Many people, Dickerson said, still see going to a surf park as a “bucket list activity.” What these investors and developers need to figure out is how to bring people back again and again. “What a lot of parks are hoping for is this magic formula,” he said, striving for the right balance between new surfers, established athletes, experience seekers and casual observers. Plus, they have to find people who have the resources — a day at a surf park is not cheap — to go often.
A water park pass runs around $40 at the Palm Springs Surf Club, which gives you access to water slides, the lazy river, a lounge pool, three bars, two restaurants and views of the surf pool. Surfing is not included.
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While exact prices vary by wave and date, an hour of shared time on the club’s waves costs around $200, while private sessions can cost thousands. Developments vary greatly in the cost to build, depending on the technology, amenities and number of pools, but one surf park developer told Wave Pool Mag the surfing and entrance experience alone usually cost at least $20 million. The Palm Springs Surf Club cost an estimated $80 million to develop.
To make the economics of these pools work, a park needs other activities aside from surfing. The lazy rivers and places to eat and drink in view of the action all attract regular visitors, while developers make a bulk of revenue from rental space for competitions, weddings, corporate events and even music festivals. After all, surfers in California made up less than 10% of the state’s population as of 2018, though studies show the surfing population is growing and even diversifying.
As millennials and Gen-Zers seek experiences — especially Instagrammable ones — over material goods, there’s a lot of competition for their attention, said Kathleen LaClair, an attractions economist with Leisure Development Partners, which completes feasibility studies for attractions such as surf parks. She said the industry has come a long way in the past decade, and while a lot of the early parks focused on the surfing experience, more venues are now looking at this broader approach that can engage more types of visitors. “The younger generation just has their sights set on more unique, exciting experiences, and I think because this falls into that category, there’s going to be continued interest in it for quite some time,” LaClair said.
LeClair said it could take a decade or more to know how this industry will pan out in the long term, but she expects to see more new projects proposed in the coming years. “If it can make for a pretty selfie and a great video … I mean, anything that has that sort of vibe to it is going to continue to be very popular with the younger generations,” LaClair said.
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Surfin’ USA, maybe
Nestled next to the John Wayne Airport in Orange County and just minutes from the ocean, a Newport Beach redevelopment plan includes a 7-acre surf lagoon accommodating up to 45 surfers an hour. A three-story clubhouse anchors the facility, accompanied by a surf shop, restaurant and bar and a spa, plus an additional building with 20 units of athlete accommodations. If approved, which could happen at the end of the year, construction is projected to take 18 months, with a 2028 opening date.
In the Bay Area, a wave park that’s part of the ongoing development of old, currently unused Navy land in Alameda popped up earlier this year. Taking an intentionally different approach without luxury amenities, the proposed Neptune Beach Surf Club would replace a parking lot. It’s targeting a 2029 opening.
In Placer County outside Sacramento, more than 100 miles from the ocean, Alchemy Surf Resort applied to build a surf complex that will be part of a new 2,200-acre master-planned community near Roseville, including residential neighborhoods, parks, a town center and a new college campus that could open in 2028. There, a 5-acre surf lagoon can host 104 surfers in the water per hour. Between the surf park, a 100-room hotel, a restaurant, retail shop, fitness facility, a skate park and a private beach club, the development hopes to attract nearly half a million visitors per year.
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Chris Gallardo, the founder of the company leading the surf park portion of the resort, grew up surfing in Pismo Beach. Living outside Sacramento for more than 20 years, he missed the accessibility to ocean surfing and saw an opportunity along the corridor from the Bay Area to Tahoe, where so many people travel every week. He started working on the project in 2022. “People will say the ocean’s free, but it’s not, at least if you live in Sacramento,” Gallardo said, explaining that with time and gas required for a two-hour drive, plus any gear you need to rent or lessons you pay, it all adds up quickly.
The Coachella Valley has the biggest bet on inland surfing, with two projects under construction that will likely compete with the already-opened Palm Springs Surf Club. Projected to open in 2026, DSRT Surf is set to include a 5.5-acre pool set within a luxury resort with residences, a hotel, retail, restaurants, a skate park, pickleball and more, including access to existing golf courses. Travel a mere 20 miles and you’ll hit Thermal Beach Club, a luxury development centered around a 20-acre lagoon that plans to include a 3.8-acre wave pool for a yet-to-be-built, 326-home community, which could open as soon as the end of 2025.
Locals also already defeated a proposed surf park in the area. The La Quinta City Council shot down a proposed pool featuring Kelly Slater’s wave technology in Coral Mountain, a private resort and residential development, in 2022, largely citing water use, lighting issues, noise and traffic concerns.
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Back closer to the beach, Ocean Kamp, a 92-acre mixed-use development in Oceanside just miles from the Pacific Ocean, is expected to include a hotel, retail shops and 667 homes surrounding a 3.5-acre surf lagoon. Progress subsided after a settlement concerning environmental impact changed the scope of the project, but the park could open sometime in 2026.
‘North America is late to the party’
People have attempted to recreate ocean waves since the mid-1800s, starting with a Bavarian king who wanted to relax among the electrified ripples of his underground pool. The Clairol company financed the first wave pool in America, Big Surf, which opened in 1969 in Tempe, Arizona. It became a sort of cultural icon at the time as surf culture peaked, hosting competitions and concerts by bands like the Beach Boys. (That pool closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, never to reopen, and has since been demolished.)
The first wave pool in California opened in 1986 as the Oasis Water Resort in Palm Springs, later Wet ’n’ Wild Palm Springs. By 2019, though, the pool’s technology was aging, and the site shut down. The developers behind the aforementioned Palm Springs Surf Club then purchased it.
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Keeping up with constantly evolving technology presents challenges, but each new development will likely battle the complaints that ultimately killed the project in La Quinta. The Palm Springs Surf Club has received 66 noise complaints since 2023, stemming from the constant hum of its wave machines. It also shut down for several months shortly after opening due to mechanical issues.
Residents who voiced opposition to the La Quinta project cited water use as a primary concern, even though most developers have said wave pools use just 1% of the water volume required by a typical golf course.
Felicia Marcus, a visiting fellow with Stanford University’s Water in the West program and the former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, said the concern around water use depends greatly on where the park gets its water, but most of the pushback surrounding water in these parks is about optics. It looks like a lot of water use, but compared to many other water-intensive projects happening throughout the country, “it’s no data center,” she said.
It also requires huge amounts of energy to create an artificial wave. The Wavegarden system — which is used in parks in Melbourne, Australia, Bristol in the United Kingdom, and Seoul and is planned for the DSRT Surf in Palm Desert and Alchemy Surf Resort outside Sacramento — utilizes about 300 to 400 kWh per one-hour surf session, the company reported. The Endless Surf system, used in a surf park in Munich and planned for other future parks, including one in Florida, said the costs of its technology averaged out to about 25 cents a wave in the U.S. in 2021. Many parks plan to offset costs by installing solar or on-site batteries.
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Some California residents don’t like replicating the surfing experience — even surfers. Carolyn Krammer, a retired competitive surfer who lives in Oceanside, said she adamantly opposes the Ocean Kamp development because of its location. She’s never visited a wave pool herself but thinks developers added the surf park in Oceanside to justify building more than 650 houses on the site.
“Putting a wave pool a mile and a half from the ocean does not make sense to me,” Krammer said. “I think the ones that are being built in Palm Springs that are inland that serve a different need, I have no problem with those.”
But the ocean itself isn’t without issues. A 2024 Surfrider Foundation Clean Water Report found that 80% of the California beaches that were analyzed exceeded state health standards at least once in 2024 due to bacteria from stormwater runoff and failing infrastructure. After the Palisades Fire in 2025, the LA County Department of Public Health issued warnings about potential debris and toxic chemicals in the water.
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In the future, California’s surf breaks may also not be as prolific as they are today. One study from the nonprofit Save The Waves Coalition showed that surf breaks change with an area’s amount of sea level rise, which permanently alters their “surfability” — the amount of time waves are surfable. In Santa Cruz, the “surfability” plummets with each foot of sea level rise, with a rise of 3 feet equaling a decline of 77%.
Gallardo said surf park momentum is growing, and the sentiment around the idea generally feels much more positive than it did just five years ago. “North America is late to the party, but we’ll probably have the most per capita out of any other country. Give it 5 or 10 years time,” he said.
“When you walk into the facility and you see these waves rolling at you just like they are when you’re standing at the beach, your mind is blown, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the future,’” Gallardo said.
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