Want to ride the waves without risking shark encounters or sand in your suit? Florida may get what’s being touted as the world’s largest surfing park, Wavegarden.
It’s envisioned as the signature feature surrounded by a massive live-work community in the Treasure Coast that includes 600 hotel rooms, 1,000 residences, and 650,000 square feet of commercial space, TCPalm.com reports.
The Willow Lakes Resort Village community would rise on 200 acres in Fort Pierce, just off Interstate 95 and about eight miles inland.
Plans for Wavegarden show an enormous swimming pool-like area “that creates up to 1,000 waves an hour and can accommodate around 100 surfers at a time” with a variety of wave shapes for all levels, a promotional video depicts, according to the newspaper.
City commissioners this week unanimously gave initial approval for the project’s first phase. A final vote is scheduled for February.
If approved, construction could begin before the end of the year.
Also on the wish list for Willow Lakes: offices; vacation rentals; a brewery; bar; entertainment such as an amphitheater, a TopGolf, a rock-climbing wall and cliff-diving area; a shopping center, restaurants, a convenience store, pharmacy and more, records show.
Wavegarden’s website says it also has surf parks in Brazil, Switzerland, South Korea, Australia, England and Wales; plus more under way in California, Brazil, Scotland and Australia.
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