A surf park planned for Gilbert, Arizona has been through three developers and two names since 2019, and it has never broken ground. The latest attempt is now dead too: the town and WhiteWater West Industries, the Canadian company behind Endless Surf, terminated their lease agreement in May without saying so publicly. Local outlet Gilbert Sun News reported the split this month after town records surfaced it, and the town's own statement leaves the site's future open, including the possibility that it never gets a wave pool at all.
How it got here
The project started in 2019 as a 25-acre piece of the town's 272-acre, four-phase Gilbert Regional Park, near Queen Creek and Higley roads in the southeast part of town. The first developer, Strand Resorts, pitched a $60 million waterpark on an annual town lease of roughly $285,000, targeting a summer 2020 opening that slipped to 2021.
Strand couldn't secure financing. In fall 2021 it sold the project to ACA Arizona, LLC, which rebranded it Cactus Surf Park and agreed to Gilbert's new deadlines: construction starting by 2022, open for business by April 2024. Neither happened. A 2023 redesign cut the project's projected water use by 60 percent, a response to drought pressure that's a real constraint for any Arizona wave pool, though PHX Surf and others in the state have made the same case Cactus did: a lagoon uses less water annually than the turf it replaces.
WhiteWater West came in as the third partner, agreeing to design, build, and operate the facility at its own cost. By October 2025, town staff were already telling council the project was on hold for five years. The formal end came in May 2026, when Gilbert and WhiteWater West mutually terminated the lease, without a public announcement.
What the town is saying now
Gilbert's statement is short and noncommittal: "The Town is exploring a range of options for the site and intends to seek community input before advancing any future proposal." Reporting has tied the pause to the town's broader finances rather than anything specific to surfing: Gilbert cited financial pressures outside its control, including recent state legislative changes that have cut into its available revenue, and in July it separately announced a pause on the next phase of Gilbert Regional Park as a whole.
That context matters. Revel Surf opened across town in Mesa in 2024, running a SwellMFG lagoon, and it's been open and selling sessions ever since, which is real proof the Phoenix market can support one of these. Cactus's problem has been financing and execution across three different developers on one specific piece of land.
Where this leaves things
Nothing is currently under construction at Gilbert Regional Park's surf park site, and the town hasn't named a fourth developer or a new plan. We're not adding Cactus Surf Park to the directory. Seven years, two names, three developers, and zero shovels in the ground put it well outside the bar we use for a project earning a page. If Gilbert picks this back up with a real partner and a real timeline, we'll cover it then.
