For about two months, Newport Beach had an approved plan for what its developer called the biggest Wavegarden installation on Earth. Then a petition drive undid it, and the project has been in limbo since.
What was approved
Back Bay Barrels LLC, led by Adam Cleary, wants to build Snug Harbor Surf Park on part of the privately owned Newport Beach Golf Course at 3100 Irvine Avenue, replacing the driving range, pro shop, restaurant, and three golf holes with a 5.06-acre Wavegarden Cove lagoon. The design calls for 66 modules, above the 62-module configuration Wavegarden treats as its standard maximum and the same count going into Surf Farm in Australia. Cleary has been blunt about why: "Because we're American, and we want the biggest and best." On acreage the math is less generous. DSRT Surf in Palm Desert already runs a 5.5-acre Cove, larger than what's planned here, so the "biggest in the world" claim rests entirely on module count rather than pool size.
The plan pairs the lagoon with a surf academy, surf shop, coffee shop, and restaurant and bar, aiming for 1,000 waves an hour across 25 settings and a pool capacity of 72 surfers at a time. On November 21, 2025, the City Council approved the project via Resolution No. 2025-71, a General Plan Amendment that raised the site's allowable development from 20,000 to 59,772 square feet.
Then a petition drive reversed it
Save Newport Beach Golf Course, a resident opposition group, gathered more than 6,100 valid signatures on a referendum petition, enough to force the city to either put the approval to a citywide vote or rescind it outright. Rather than fund an election, the Council voted 6-0, with one member recused, to rescind Resolution 2025-71 at its January 27, 2026 meeting. Councilmember Sara Weber called the process "very complex from the beginning." Opposition leader Benny Hallock was more direct, describing wave pools generally as "trendy, shiny objects that fail under financial reliability."
The rescission doesn't zero out the project. Councilmember Erik Weigand noted a wave pool could still be built under the site's existing zoning as an outdoor recreational use, just at something closer to the original 20,000-square-foot limit rather than the nearly 60,000 approved and then withdrawn. Back Bay Barrels has not said publicly whether it will pursue that smaller version; the development team declined to comment when asked.
Now it's in court
In April 2026, a group of residents sued the city, arguing that officials, including City Manager Seimone Jurjis, were still working to advance the project despite the rescission, and asking a judge to block any further development or golf course demolition. As of this writing, there's been no ruling.
The real estate case against it
There's a reason this fight is about more than surfing. The county owns the golf course's back nine on a ground lease that expires in 2027, and the site sits inside Newport Beach's Airport Area housing overlay, a zone the city has already used for large residential conversions: roughly 700 units at MacArthur Court and more than 1,200 planned at Uptown Newport. Newport Beach also has a state-mandated obligation to plan for 4,845 new housing units under California's RHNA process, and the Airport Area overlay alone allows for up to 2,577 of them. One real estate analysis of the site concluded plainly that residential, not surfing, is the more probable long-term use once the golf lease runs out.
That tension, a developer chasing a superlative lagoon on land a city may need for housing, is becoming a recognizable pattern as the surf-anchored real estate model spreads beyond greenfield sites into built-up coastal cities. We'll update this page as the lawsuit and any revised Snug Harbor proposal move forward.
