Palm Desert wave park DSRT Surf under construction. Read about the plans and opening date

DSRT Surf — a development planned at Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert that will include a 5.5-acre surf lagoon, a hotel and surrounding homes — is now moving forward after years of planning and a pandemic delay. The developer expects the project’s wave park to open in early summer 2026.

Project and city officials held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday at the site, roughly 18 acres of vacant land just southwest of the golf resort’s clubhouse and parking lot. The groundbreaking came after the project’s developer, Desert Wave Ventures LLC, bought the land from the city for about $2.5 million.

Plans for the roughly $200 million project were approved by the city council in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic also slowed the project, and the council later extended some of the escrow deadlines while scaling down plans for the site's four-story hotel. Owners of the "villas," up to 50 condos and 33 single-family houses surrounding the lagoon, will also have the option of renting them out to vacationers with management by the hotel.

DSRT Surf is also expected to be a boon to the city's coffers, with estimates that it will bring roughly $26.9 million in tax revenue to the city over 20 years once it's finished. Upon the completion of the entire project, officials expect it will create roughly 400 jobs.

The council initially authorized $20 million in bonds to help pay for public infrastructure upgrades related to the project. But DSRT Surf is now being funded completely privately, so those city bonds are no longer a part of the project, city spokesperson Thomas Soule told The Desert Sun.

While the surf park and other amenities are expected to open in early summer 2026, a timeline for the project’s second phase, including the hotel and homes, has yet to be determined, according to Doug Sheres, a managing member with the development group.

Water usage and admission costs for surf park

Sheres gave the opening remarks during the groundbreaking ceremony, saying the project is “going to change a lot of lives out here through Southern California, really throughout California and the world, as people come and experience the DSRT Surf resort.”

He noted the lagoon — using technology developed by Wavegarden Cove — will have different bays that produce waves appropriate for a wide range of surfers, from beginners to experts, with a capacity of up to 70 surfers simultaneously.

Regarding the resort’s water usage, Sheres said DSRT Surf will use roughly the amount of water that is necessary for one hole on a golf course, noting it’s surrounded by a 36-hole golf complex at Desert Willow.

The Coachella Valley Water District, which signed off on the project's environmental assessments, has estimated roughly 73 acre-feet of annual water demand for the surf lagoon, while the average water use on a valley golf course is about 955 acre-feet per year, according to CVWD estimates in recent years. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough to serve at least two households per year.)

Sheres noted additional steps that will offset the lagoon's water usage, including the removal of 20 acres of turf from the surrounding Desert Willow golf courses to be replaced with drought-tolerant landscaping. In total, those efforts are expected to yield 106.75 acre-feet per year in water savings — more than the lagoon's total projected annual water demand.

Factoring in those reductions, the net water demand for the overall project — including the hotel and condos planned for the second phase — is projected at 7.6 acre-feet per year, according to planning documents submitted to the city. The project will also feature dry wells to allow for runoff drainage from the lagoon into the aquifer, Sheres said.

Admission costs for the surf lagoon are still being determined, but it will be more expensive for the premium, more advanced waves than for beginner and novice surfers, according to Blake Hess, a partner with Beach Street Development and Operations, which is managing the project.

The development team is also planning to get local schools involved with DSRT Surf, after already working with some of them in surfing events along the coast, Hess said.

City officials praise development

City officials lauded the project Thursday. Mayor Pro Tem Jan Harnik said it was a “long, painstaking process” to get it off the ground, but said the resort will be great for Palm Desert, as well as the entire region.

“We look forward to seeing all the healthy activities, all the great people who come here to enjoy it, our community members, who now have something great to do (and) our students, our young people who have something great to do during the summer, something wholesome, something good for them,” Harnik said. “We’re proud to be the host of that.”

Eric Ceja, the city’s director of economic development, said the project should help to boost the area’s summer tourism market, noting their hope to have “many events here that are successful for the whole region.” The project has gained support from the Family YMCA of the Desert and students with the East Valley Board Riders, a surf club at Desert Mirage High School.

Along with its hotel and residential components, the DSRT Surf lagoon will have a much larger capacity than the only other surf park in the Coachella Valley. The Palm Springs Surf Club, which can accommodate up to 25 surfers, opened at the start of 2024, but its wave pool has been shut down due to technical issues. While the park’s restaurant and other water-themed attractions have remained open, the wave pool was still closed for maintenance work as of early May, according to a post on the surf club’s Facebook page.

Meanwhile, the Thermal Beach Club, a resort with a 20-acre surf lagoon and more than 300 high-end homes in the eastern Coachella Valley, is tentatively expected to open at the end of 2024, according to an update from the project’s developer last year.

This story includes prior reporting by former staff writer Sherry Barkas.

Tom Coulter covers the cities of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells. Reach him at thomas.coulter@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert wave park DSRT Surf now under construction. What to know