"Unforseen challenges!"
Amid much hoopla in 2017, the WSL announced it had bought a 30-acre hunk of land in Palm Beach for six-and-a-half-mill and was going to stick a Surf Ranch on it.
Palm Beach County commissioners loved the idea.
“(Surfers) don’t like some of the slop we have here,” the mayor told Kelly Slater.
“We’re trying to fix that,” Slater said.
Slater predicted that the new Surf Ranch, only the second in the world, would be running by early 2019.
Yesterday, the WSL announced it was abandoning the plan.
“The WSL is disappointed to confirm our decision to cancel the development of the wave basin planned for West Palm Beach,” said the WSL in a statement. “The nature of this site, including the extremely high water table, exposed unforeseen challenges that made the decision around this unique project clear. These projects are complex and in many ways without precedent, and we have learned important lessons in this process.”
Meanwhile, the former Wavegarden in Austin, Texas, sits idle while the WSL, who bought the joint earlier this year and ordered the inferior technology removed, decides whether or not the site is going to be Surf Ranched.
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I often travel to West Palm Beach for work…. first time I was awoken. The real estate is not only taken up, but by ridiculous wealth. Newport Beach, Ca has “wealth” and nothing is more impressive than a 70′ yacht moored next to a 12K square foot home, BUT in WPB that same house is well over 20K square feet and their boat is most often over 200′ in length including the onboard helicopter pad and the bayside cabana that is as enormous as the Newpy home.
Where would you put a pool? There are no “free” acres to build upon. Maybe the Breakers will sell Ziff their golf course? (Don’t count on it).
There is a weird jetty in front of the hotel that had little knee high left wedges on it’s southern edge, FYI.
Basin or tub? We need to start using the same terminology here.
WSL needs an IPO. They can lose way more money than Uber.
Don’t forget that Amazon lost a ton of money before ever turning a profit.
Maybe free Surf Ranch with Prime membership???
YES!!!
As a Floridan I must say Im quite happy about this. The last thing we need are Alligators 🐊 trying to get barreled Also Miami will be underwater soon anyhow so it wouldn’t have worked out anyways if they actually thought this through they would have built it in Orlando
I rather have the new Star Wars world.
Really?? Could they not have capitalised on wedding market in Florida – really seems like the obvious way forward all round.
“Wedding pools”
This reads exactly like a Trump tweet
How low has Slater gone. Bad (or sick) guy!
“Wave basin”??! WTF. That name keeps popping up. Who the fuck settled on that? Sounds like an ELoism
Should have read this first before I commented – I thought we’d agreed on tub?
It’d be a great fit at Mar-A-Lago! Special edition Outerknown MAGA hats ?? It’s a no brainer. The WSL wants to expand its audience to red state people anyway right?
The wave park planned for Perth was canned too. And if anyone ‘needs’ a wave park, it is us that are stuck in fucken Perth
Hey, after seeing Waco and other wave parks planned, the Wsl probably realized they have an inferior wave set up–wave per minutes etc.–and realized its probably not a good financial risk, and instead of admit that came up with some other excuses……
Maybe they can repurpose it as a real ranch.
An ALPACA RANCH!
Would OK charge more or less for a knit cap made from genuine Floridian alpaca?
wait… so you are saying that building a massive wave pool on top of former swamp didn’t work???? WOW! what a surprise!
I guess the Wozzle
Never heard of soil tests
Fools and their money…
or it could just be something to save face–to stop going through with a bad idea now that other waves parks have better wave set ups….
Open thread: comment on Beach Grit’s cheap ploy to monetise the WSL webcast via clicks and webpage traffic without writing an article. Pretty genius really. Fuck the WSL.
Fuck sake I commented on the wrong article. Now I can’t capitalise on the up votes. Fuck me.
Three thousand four hundred people currently on BeachGrit! How does the monetise thing work?
Haha good question mate. Can ya hit up Mayhem and say that he’s getting more advertising than ever? He’s a pretty cranky cunt though. Wouldn’t push it.
Ol Matt got wooed by Stab. He ain’t coming back.
Fucking hate STAB mate. Won’t be buying another Mayhem from that fat cunt then.
Chan agree’s
Can we now acknowledge his arrest a few miles south of beach access issues in Duck N.C. ?
Bill Gates will send you 5 cents per visitor, didn’t you get the email?
can you elaborate on that? monetize the Wsl? how so?
High water table – lololololol
A $6 million toilet bowl. Laughing my big fat hairy arse off.
Brilliant – what’s the next buy, a bridge ?
A boat! https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Boat wouldn’t be a bad idea. Park it in a remote reef pass when it’s firing, host a webcast from it, no identifying land masses in the background. Fly a dozen of the best surfers in for the peak of the swell, run a leaderboard comp finished in one day. Wa-la! Thats good for 3 of the comps at least. Then edit it down to a 90 minute package, all killer no filler, lots of storyline and bravado, and put it on fox sports on a Friday or Saturday night for the muggles, sorry the “non-surfing audience”. If you watch the live stream you get super loose proper surf commentary and no scores at all – this is for the core. The core can then decide for themselves who wins, creating 3-4 days of anticipation until release of the edit, when the scores and tension is shown. Surfers on the day would know the leaderboard and winner on the day, they would then party on!