A 203-acre property in Fort Pierce, Florida was supposed to hold a Wavegarden Cove at the center of a $595 million residential community called Koa Bay. The surf park is now off. The land is the subject of a rezoning application to build an AI data center, and that application goes before the city's Planning and Zoning Board on Sept. 17.
The reason is the ordinary one. Koa Bay's owner, Chad LaBonte of Devcon Enterprises, told Surfer that the money never came together: "After several years of trying, we could not raise the necessary capital to build the surf park." Construction never began.
What Koa Bay was going to be
The plan was one of the larger surf-anchored real estate projects announced in the United States. Around 1,000 residences, retail and office space, two hotels, and surfside bungalows, all arranged around a Wavegarden Cove. Florida has no Cove open today, and the only other one planned in the state, at Jacksonville, has not broken ground either.
Two sets of power lines cross the property through easements, which complicated the layout of a residential community. That detail matters for what happened next.
What is proposed instead
Willow Lakes LLC, which owns the 203 acres at 10050 W. Midway Rd. near Interstate 95, filed a rezoning application in June. It asks the city to put 174 acres into light industrial use for the data center, and the remaining 26 acres into general commercial, which the application describes as intended for retail and "could include a hotel, gas station and/or restaurants/fast food."
The pitch turns the site's problem into its selling point. WPTV reported that the landowner points to the Florida Power & Light transmission lines already crossing the property, and to a man-made lake that could feed a closed-loop cooling system. The easements that made the housing harder are what make the data center easy.
Approval is not a formality. Fort Pierce City Commissioner Michael Broderick told WPTV that "data centers are kind of the rage right now," and said he wants the developers to show there will be no impact to groundwater, no effect on residents' utility bills from the power draw, and no noise pollution. "If they don't, then I will not be supportive of it." Parker Whiteside, who lives about a mile and a half away, put it more briefly: "I hate that idea."
Local activist Kevin Keene has asked the city commission to draft an ordinance requiring a unanimous five-member vote to approve any future high-impact data center, citing noise and the demand on cooling water and electricity. If the rezoning is approved, the developer would still need to submit a site plan and get that approved separately.
If you paid Koa Bay money
Membership deposits and prepaid session fees are being refunded to early subscribers and investors, according to LaBonte. He also said the search for a wave has not ended: "We are actively looking for alternative sites in the St. Lucie County market."
That is a narrower statement than it first reads. The surf park at this site is finished either way. LaBonte has said that if the industrial rezoning is refused, a commercial and residential project would still go ahead on the land, without the pool.
Good to Know
This is the third US project we have covered since late August to lose its site, its developer, or its approvals. Gilbert, Arizona's Cactus Surf Park lost its third developer in seven years without ever breaking ground, and Newport Beach reversed its own approval of a project the council had already cleared.
None of the three failed on the wave. Cactus died on financing across three separate owners. Koa Bay died on financing. Newport died on politics. The engineering is the solved part of this industry, and capital and local government are the parts that are not.
It is also a reminder of what pipeline counts do and do not tell you. We track 81 surf parks worldwide, 47 of them open and 34 in some stage of development. That second number only ever counts projects that are still alive. Koa Bay never entered it, and projects that die tend to leave the tally without an announcement, which makes the pipeline look steadier than it is.
Florida has four surf parks left in the pipeline and one open, and the open one is a standing wave near Tampa rather than a lagoon you paddle into. The nearest project to the Koa Bay site by a wide margin is The Point Surf Park in Fellsmere, under 30 miles up I-95, which is under construction with an Endless Surf lagoon and is the furthest along of the four. The others are Jacksonville Surf Park, Peak Surf Park near Tampa, and Shell Point Beach & Surf Club in Panama City Beach.
For the full picture of what is actually being built and where, see our surf parks under construction tracker and the Florida guide.
