A note from Caden
I moved to Utah in 2019 and I have been apologizing to my surfboard ever since. It has spent seven years leaning against a garage wall, coming down every couple of months for a flight to California and a weekend of trying to remember how to do the thing I love. Every time I drove past the Point of the Mountain and watched the paragliders, some small part of my brain would think, this is the closest Utah gets to a lineup.
So you can imagine what it did to me to read that the city of Draper, twenty minutes from my apartment, has approved a full-size surf park: an approved master plan, with an actual developer, and an actual wave technology company attached. I have been running this site for a while now, tracking parks all over the planet, and I did not think this day would come this soon, this close to home. Forgive me if the reporting below occasionally sounds like a kid on Christmas morning. I will try to keep it professional. No promises.
What actually got approved
On June 9, the Draper City Council voted unanimously to amend the master plan for Veranda West, a development on the west side of I-15 off Bangerter Highway, near 600 West. Jackson Sheppard, president of Kamaka Responsible Development, presented the surf park to the council, and KSL describes The Wasatch Group as a real estate development company involved in the project. If you know the area, the property sits between the FrontRunner tracks and Bangerter Highway, near the old state prison site in the Point of the Mountain area.
The revised plan adds an 8.8-acre surf park, which we now track in the directory, and expands the apartments and the retail space. Around it, Veranda West calls for 418 residential units, including more than a hundred townhomes that already exist, nearly 300 apartments, and a retail village with restaurants. The surf park is the anchor amenity, the thing meant to make the whole district feel like somewhere rather than anywhere.
City officials seem to get that. Draper Mayor Troy Walker told KSL it is "a pretty unique opportunity to have an amenity that I think will be, you know, as much of an attraction as anything." He also noted that no tax incentives are being promised to the developers, for those keeping score at home, and he told KUTV the development is privately funded. This is private money.
The wave
USA Surfing's announcement says the pool will be powered by Endless Surf. That name should be familiar if you read this site: it is the same pneumatic technology running O2 SurfTown MUC near Munich, the new lagoon at Aquarabia in Saudi Arabia, and the pool under construction at The Point Surf Park in Florida. Endless Surf pools make waves with air pressure in a row of pneumatic chambers along the back wall, and beginners and more advanced surfers can share a session: the main waves break at the peak while the leftover energy makes whitewash for learners near the shore.
The Wasatch Group describes "consistent and customizable waves" for surfers of all skill levels, which is standard surf park language, but in this case the credibility comes from somewhere else entirely.
The Olympic part
On June 16, USA Surfing named Kamaka the title sponsor of its 2026 championships and announced that, as part of the partnership, the Utah pool will become a training center for its national team when it opens in late 2027. Endless Surf's release calls it the official training center for USA Surfing's national team, ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and beyond. Sit with that for a second. If the plan holds, America's national team surfers will be training in the Salt Lake Valley, in a state with no coastline, just off I-15.
Sheppard put it plainly to the council: "This is a world-class facility; other Olympic national teams use wave pools just like this." USA Surfing makes a more specific case. It says the pool will be able to replicate wave conditions similar to Lower Trestles, the surfing venue for the Los Angeles 2028 Games, so athletes can supplement ocean training with consistent, repeatable sessions. You can ask for the same wave again and again, something the ocean will never give you.
The water question, honestly
Utah has been in a statewide drought this year and everyone here knows it, so let us deal with this directly. Sheppard told the council the pool is expected to use roughly 6 to 9 million gallons of water per year, running a closed-loop system that the developers say is designed to capture rainfall and snowmelt. He also told the council that high-density housing on the same footprint would use about 28 million gallons a year and commercial development around 109 million.
Those comparisons come from the developer, so take them as advocacy. The mayor's case is simpler: Walker said the developer is already entitled to build apartments or offices on the site, with water already allotted, and that "the surf park is much less intense water use than what they could do," the Draper Journal reported. Project representatives also said the pool should never need draining, and the pool deck slopes to capture water lost to splashing. That does not make the water question disappear, and locals are right to ask it. It does put the number in perspective.
When you can actually surf it
The dates depend on who you ask. In June, Kainoa Clark, chief marketing officer for The Wasatch Group, said construction on the surf park was anticipated to begin this fall, with a target opening sometime in 2028, KSL reported. USA Surfing's announcement says late 2027, and the Draper Journal reported on September 3 that the developers had told the planning commission they hoped to break ground in September and open the wave pool in September 2027. Once it opens, Sheppard said it will run as a semi-private club, with some hours reserved for members and others open to the public, and the developers said the pool will be heated and open year-round.
We track surf park timelines for a living, and we will be honest with you the way we always are: they slip. Fall groundbreakings become spring groundbreakings, and opening years have a way of sliding. Until dirt moves, hold the date loosely.
But the approval is real, the Austin Townhomes at Veranda West are already built, and the USA Surfing partnership gives this project a deadline with actual consequences.
Utah is becoming a surf state
Here is the part that still feels surreal. Draper is not even Utah's only project. Zion Shores is under construction in Washington, near St. George, with a PerfectSwell pool and two UNIT wave pools. Southern Shores, a private residential community in Hurricane, already has a UNIT surf pool for its property owners, and Three Bridges in Salem is planning a private surf and paddle lake. If Draper and Zion Shores both land, Utah will have big wave pools at both ends of the state, and landlocked surfers here will suddenly have somewhere to be after work.
I keep thinking about the version of me that went to Waco in 2019 and got hooked in a Texas lagoon, wondering if inland surfing would ever come to him. It took seven years. It is coming to Draper. I will be first in line, and I will report back on every inch of it.
Rendering courtesy of The Wasatch Group.
