Waves in Palm Desert? Plans for artificial surf resort hint at Southern California’s surfing future

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By LAYLAN CONNELLY | lconnelly@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: July 12, 2019 at 9:37 am

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If you want to catch waves, grab your surfboards and take the freeway inland, hours away from the coastline — and into the dry desert.

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Plans are underway to create an adventure getaway called “DSRT SURF,” a resort-style destination in Palm Desert that would be Southern California’s first artificial, new-wave surfing destination — an addition to the region’s already rich surf culture that goes beyond the beach, providing access to waves without having to step foot in the ocean.

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That means no sharks or stingrays. No afternoon wind that could spoil the surf, or lack of swell keeping the ocean flat. No navigating congested coastal traffic.

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Man-made waves popping up around the world are created by machines with a precise consistency not found in nature. But for some surfers, it’s just that unpredictability that makes traditional surfing, in the ocean, so appealing.

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A wave of wave pools

Mimicking the ocean is no new concept — there were attempts as far back as the ’80s to create artificial surfing pools.

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The technology wasn’t ready decades ago, though, with waves pushing toward surfers more like a rushing river, and for decades the idea wiped out. Smaller wave pools appeared at hotels and on cruise ships, but more as novelty attractions than as waves surfers would actually be stoked on.

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But in recent years, wave pools with more ocean-like waves have been developed.

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A company called Wavegarden, which created its first prototype pool in 2010, is leading the charge, teaming up with developers and investors who have built in Spain, the United Kingdom and NLand Surf Park in Austin, Texas.

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Wavegarden’s first project, Surf Snowdonia in the United Kingdom, opened in 2015. In its first year, it drew 150,000 visitors, the machines cranking out an estimated 30,000 waves.

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There has been trouble along the way for wave-pool operators, the worst being a brain-eating amoeba that was blamed for the death of a 29-year-old surfer whose family visited BSR Surf Resort in Waco, Texas, in September and has filed a lawsuit against the operation. The pool  – using American Wave Machines technology — has since added a $2 million filtration system approved by the Texas Department of State Health Services, according to the Waco Tribune.

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In California, the only other major wave-pool project to create a buzz is Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, which debuted last year in the agricultural center of the state, in the small town of Lemoore, near Fresno. Though the waves are said to be perfect, gaining access to surf the private pool isn’t easy.

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So far, there have been a few contests allowing surfing’s elite to showcase their skills — with one coming up in September, the Freshwater Pro, as a stop on the World Tour. Otherwise, it’s been mostly surf industry insiders, friends, or those willing to pay big bucks. A wave-riding session at the Surf Ranch was going for $10,000 during the Founder’s Cup event last year.

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Desert getaway

At DSRT SURF, the goal is to blend the beach and the desert, creating a resort-destination getaway that is more than a day trip, amusement park experience.

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“The easiest way I describe it, it’s more Baja than Bali. We want to pay homage to the desert 

landscape, but we also want people who are surfers to feel like they are going to the beach,” said Marco Gonzalez, a partner and attorney with DSRT SURF who grew up surfing Oceanside. “Those of us who are putting this together, we are lifelong surfers. We’re transposing what we do on the coast to this inland location.”

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Though plans for DSRT SURF are still in the early stages, some details have been unveiled. An environmental impact report is in its final stages and then the project will head to the Planning Commission before going to the City Council by early fall. If approved, the project would break ground next year and be open by 2021.

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DSRT SURF would sit on a 17-acre site within Desert Willow Golf Resort, city-owned land developed in 1998. The cost for the DSRT SURF land is an estimated $2.5 million, with the total project build-out expected to be about $200 million, Gonzalez said.

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The surf lagoon will be on 5.5 acres. A “surf center” will have ticketing, restaurants, a bar and retail shops. A hotel will have up to 350 rooms, and there will be 88 residential villas, on about 5.84 acres, the draft EIR reads.

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In all, the project will cover 11.85 acres, according to the report submitted to the city of Palm Desert. 

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Developers will try to minimize the impact on the environment with water conservation practices, native and drought-tolerant landscaping, and solar power throughout the resort, according to the draft EIR.

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Gonzalez and partners Doug Sheres and John Luff teamed up with pro surfers, including American brothers CJ and Damien Hobgood and Australian Josh Kerr, not just for their surf savvy, but also their perspectives as surfers with children.

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“Because of the nature of this destination surf resort, we wanted surfers who could understand what it’s like to have kids and bring them in the surfing world,” Gonzalez said. “They are in regular communication with us — look, feel, how we roll this out, how to maintain authenticity, how to keep it ‘surfy’… . There’s been others that are more day-use or theme-park related. Ours is the first that will encapsulate the surf vibe, and try to make an experience in the desert that takes the best of the desert and best of the beach and marries them together.”

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There will be a variety of waves, mostly in the chest- to head-high range, though they can be programmed to suit different skill levels, Gonzalez said. There’s a program with a deep drop with a barrel section, and a setting for longer shoulders allowing a surfer to do more maneuvers. An area will be set aside just for beginners, as well as one for intermediate surfers.

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The pool would be able to hold 60 to 80 people in the water at any given time, spread between 

five or six different peaks.

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Cost to use the pool has yet to be finalized.

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Nature vs. technology

Nature comes with its challenges – but for some, that’s the lure of surfing.

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“There’s always the surfing purists who can find something wrong with it, but at the end of the day, we’ll have wave pools that can redefine the surfing experience for the next generation of surfers,” Gonzalez said. “It will be novelty for a few years, but eventually it will be the fabric of surfing.”

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Huntington Beach surfer Laura Klees, who owns Gypsea Life Surf and Travel, took a group to Austin, Texas, to ride waves at the NLand Surf Park. Mother Nature wasn’t totally gone from the equation — her group’s surf session was delayed because of a lightning storm.

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When they did get a chance to ride the waves, she said, it was fun – for awhile.

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“We were super stoked for the first few waves, but after that it was kind of mundane,” Klees said.

 

What was missing was the element of surprise: There was no need to quickly look back to see if a set wave was going to crash on your head, or if you had to dodge out of the way for a surfer on the next wave.

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“You take your wave, you ride it and you’re on this great high, wave after wave,” she said, speaking by cellphone en route to explore surf at Scorpion Bay in Mexico. “After the wave, all your senses are dulled … you lose that heightened sense and it becomes mundane.”

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The good part is it’s a great learning tool, because of the predictability.

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“If you have a specific thing you want to work on, you can work on it over and over and over. Maybe you want to pop up quicker or surf closer to the peak,” she said. “You can do that in the wave pool, really easily.”

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Would she do it again?

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If there was no swell for a long time, or too much wind that made surf crumby for long periods, Klees said, she could see herself returning to a wave pool.

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Those unpredictable environmental factors are what Gonzalez hopes will bring traditional surfers inland.

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“I think the prospect of surfing really good waves with your family and friends without it being flat or blown out is always going to be attractive to surfers,” he said.

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The untapped market, he said, will be the aspiring surfer who can’t get to — or is intimidated by — the ocean.

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“I think people who haven’t tried surfing, but can do so in a controlled environment, that will always be attractive,” he said. “We’ll hopefully reach a whole new generation of future surfers.”

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And that means, as more wave pools pop up in surf-starved areas across the country and the world, the sport of surfing will be changed forever.

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“Surfers today are the last generation that will know a surf world without wave pools,” Gonzalez said. “It will be fundamentally different. There will be kids that learn to surf in pools and then graduate to the beach.”