A $50 million surf pool proposed for Alameda Point, on San Francisco Bay, has been the subject of city negotiations with one developer since October 2025. In July, the chief executive of a rival wave-pool company asked the city council why the project was advancing through talks with a single developer rather than an open, competitive solicitation. On July 7, after a closed session on the negotiations, the council directed staff to schedule a community workshop this fall and to return to closed session on a potential exclusive negotiating agreement after it.
What's actually proposed
Neptune Beach Surf Club wants to build a 5.5-acre facility at Enterprise Park, on a former Navy site in Alameda's West End, anchored by a 2-acre Endless Surf lagoon with waves for up to 50 surfers. The project is led by William Duncanson of BAR Architects & Interiors, with Pro Swell handling surf-park operations and Urban Mix Development as a partner. Beyond the water, the plan includes a bar and restaurant open to the public, a man-made beach with cabanas, a canoe club, a skate pump track, and a converted Navy building holding the surf center, gear rentals, a community room, and public restrooms. Duncanson's early price predictions, given to the San Francisco Standard in June 2025: $85 an hour for beginner waves, $145 for intermediate A-frame waves and about $200 for Point Break waves, which offer longer rides, with gear rental and a 30-minute dry-land lesson included for beginners. Duncanson has said the team looked at other sites before landing on Alameda: "We've looked at doing this elsewhere, but Alameda's the best spot." At the time he hoped to break ground within 24 to 30 months and open in 2029. Formal plans had not been filed with the city at that point, according to its planning department, and as of the council's July 2026 direction an exclusive negotiating agreement was still only "potential."
How it got to one developer
The city and Neptune rolled out the proposal at a pop-up community meeting on May 17, 2025. Public records obtained by the Alameda Post later showed that two other surf pool developers contacted city staff soon afterward. On May 19, San Francisco's economic development department emailed asking whether it could connect the city with a French company, identified as Business France, "which is creating a type of surfing wave pool." On May 27, SurfLoch, the pneumatic surf pool company run by Tom Lochtefeld, who developed the FlowRider, asked to be considered for the project; its technology runs Palm Springs Surf Club and RIF010 in Rotterdam.
The records include no response from city staff inviting the French company to visit Alameda, the Post reported. Staff told SurfLoch the city was "in the early phases of exploring potential opportunities for this site," and when staff took the leasing concept to the Recreation and Park Commission on July 10, 2025, neither inquiry was mentioned, according to the Post. On October 21, 2025, the city council unanimously approved four city officials as real property negotiators for part of Enterprise Park with Neptune Beach Surf Club Development Partners, which a staff report said would let them discuss "a potential Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA)" with the council in closed session. In the closed session that followed, the minutes record that "staff provided information, and the city council provided direction," by unanimous voice vote. When Lochtefeld asked again in November 2025 about other city sites, Abby Thorne-Lyman, the city's director of base reuse and economic development, replied that the city would "still hold on exploration of a private surf park on other city-owned land until we advance far enough into the process for council to provide direction to change course."
SurfLoch pushes back
On July 1, 2026, Lochtefeld wrote to the council asking "why a project of this scale and public significance appears to be advancing through negotiations with a single, predetermined developer rather than through an open, competitive solicitation." He asked the council to direct staff to open a competitive solicitation, on the park site or on commercial land suitable for sale, and said SurfLoch would welcome the chance to compete to build on land it would buy. His pitch is structurally different from Neptune's: "Rather than the leasing of public parkland, a purchase structure places the development risk on the buyer, generates sale proceeds the city could apply toward its substantial Alameda Point infrastructure obligations, and returns the parcel to the property tax rolls," he wrote. He had made the same case to city staff a year earlier: "In view of potential community resistance, my group would prefer a location that is already targeted for commercial use and capable of land purchase," he wrote on July 18, 2025, three months before staff took Neptune's proposal to the council.
Where it stands now
The council met in closed session on the Neptune negotiations again on July 7, 2026. Afterward, the city clerk announced that the council had voted unanimously to direct staff to schedule a community workshop in the fall, "including but not limited to exploring and considering the merits of a surf park project, any potential exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) process, and community benefits in the vicinity of Enterprise Park," and to return to the council in closed session to discuss a potential ENA after the workshop. As of 23 October 2026, Neptune's website still says the club plans to bring inland surfing to the Bay Area.
Neptune Beach Surf Club has a page in our directory, marked under development. A 2025 city staff report said the project would need both a development agreement and a lease with the city, and the council has put that workshop on the agenda for its meeting on 4 November 2026.
