Arizona has become one of the strangest surf markets in the country. It has no coastline, punishing summer heat, and a genuine water problem, and it also has a wave pool already open in Mesa, a second one under discussion an hour west, and a metro area of five million people with money to spend on recreation. The next project in that pile is the biggest of them: a 40-acre surf resort called PHX Surf, planned for Maricopa, about 40 minutes south of Phoenix.
The design work is done. AO, the California architecture firm, has been named architect of record and released a full set of renderings, and the developer announced a March 2026 groundbreaking on the city's west side. What has not appeared yet is confirmation that anyone has actually turned dirt.
What is planned
The centerpiece is a 137,000 square foot lagoon, a little over three acres of water, powered by Endless Surf's pneumatic system. Endless Surf names its configurations by the number of air caissons that drive the wave, so the ES48 specified here sits above the ES34 running at O2 SurfTown in Munich and the ES36 going into The Point in Fellsmere, Florida. The only comparable configuration announced in the United States is the 48-chamber basin Meriwether Companies is planning at Thermal Beach Club for members of its Coral Mountain club in the California desert. The PHX Surf pool is designed with two bays so different skill levels can run at the same time, which is the operating model behind the on-site surf academy.
Around the water sits the part that pays for it. Phase one includes a hotel district of roughly 100 bungalows, some with roof decks, clustered around the lagoon and 3D printed by Icon, the Austin construction technology company. There is a resort center, lagoon-front restaurants and bars, a full-service spa and wellness center with gardens and pools, a retail district with a surf shop, and a surf center holding ticketing, academy space, and offices. Phase two adds an event and entertainment venue on about 3.7 acres, a water park on nearly 18, a pump track, and a 30-site RV district.
The team behind it is Mesa-based PHX Surf, led by CEO Erin LaGrassa, working with AO on architecture and landscape, Endless Surf on the wave, and the City of Maricopa on the site.
From waterpark to wellness resort
The project has been through a full identity change. When it first surfaced publicly in 2021 it was pitched as a roughly $100 million waterpark: slides, a lazy river, and early filings describing a 71-acre site with two five-acre lagoons, an 80-room hotel, 31,000 square feet of retail, and 42 villas.
What is on the boards now is smaller and pointed at a different customer. One lagoon instead of two, the slides and lazy river pushed into a later phase, and the marketing language moved to "barefoot luxury" with spa, recovery, and fitness programming sitting alongside the surf. That shift tracks what is happening across the industry, where the surf lagoon increasingly works as the anchor for a resort and a residential program rather than as a standalone attraction. Developers spent a whole day making exactly that argument at the industry's first real estate conference in July.
Arizona keeps stacking up
If PHX Surf gets built, it joins a state that has quietly become one of the denser wave pool markets in North America. Revel Surf is already open in Mesa, running a SwellMFG lagoon that breaks as a true A-frame alongside a UNIT standing wave. Hidden Lake Surf Resort, an Endless Surf project in Buckeye on the far west side of the metro, is early in its own process. Add PHX Surf in the south and greater Phoenix could support three separate surf destinations spread across roughly 70 miles.
The obvious question in a desert city is water. Endless Surf and its peers argue that a lagoon uses less water annually than the landscaping it replaces, and the comparison the industry likes to make is to golf: a single wave pool is often put at roughly the annual irrigation of one golf hole. Greater Phoenix has around 200 golf courses. That framing is favorable to the industry and it is also the number a city council will be asked to weigh, so expect it to come up as this one moves through permitting.
Where it actually stands
The honest status is that PHX Surf is a fully designed project with an announced start date and no confirmed construction. The March 2026 groundbreaking was announced in December 2025, and the most recent public reporting we can find still dates to that announcement. It is also not the first date this project has set: developers previously pointed at a December 2024 groundbreaking that came and went while the plans kept evolving.
None of that makes it unserious. An architect of record, a named wave vendor, a finished design package, and a cooperative city are real assets, and plenty of surf parks have taken longer than this to reach the same point. But a target is not a schedule, and until there is grading on the site, PHX Surf sits in the same category as most of the pipeline.
The things worth watching are specific: site work at State Route 238 and Loma Road, a construction contract, and an Endless Surf manufacturing slot. We have added PHX Surf to the directory and will update its park page as those land. For everything else in the pipeline, see our opening tracker and the full directory.
Rendering courtesy of AO / PHX Surf.
