Big wave surfing is coming to a city near you

The Future. A startup called Aventuur is giving surfing the ski resort treatment… on dry land. The goal is to create the Topgolf of surfing essentially. While the first location won’t open until 2026, a date in a landlocked city like Denver could soon consist of catching some waves and then catching a movie.

Ocean Ave.
Aventuur wants to expand access to surfing by making it possible for those who don’t live on a coast.

• The company plans to build “integrated surf park developments,” which are “mixed use projects of hotels, housing, restaurants, and wellness facilities built around lagoons equipped with wave-generating technology.”
• The surf parks, made possible by Spanish firm Wavegarden, would generate 900 surfable waves per hour, measuring up to six feet high to accommodate both amateur and experienced surfers — all housed within a five-acre lagoon.
• Aventuur already has developments in the works in Perth, Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand, with 11 others planned in US cities like LA, NYC, Denver, and Nashville — all costing around $50 to $100 million per location.

While there’ll certainly be some novelty to the surf parks, Aventuur co-founder Nicholas Edelman stresses the surrounding vibe of the parks is equally important, with yoga studios, spas, and bars all planned.

Normalizing surfing outside the ocean may take some getting used to, but it’s not without precedent. In 2015, surfing legend Kelly Slater opened Surf Ranch in Lemoore, CA — 110 miles from the Pacific Ocean.