{"id":844947,"date":"2026-08-03T19:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/844947\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T19:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:54:16","slug":"a-surf-park-is-coming-to-b-c-and-its-making-waves-with-the-locals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/844947\/","title":{"rendered":"A surf park is coming to B.C. \u2014 and it’s making waves with the locals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

Lynne Cook has lived in the small seaside community of Britannia Beach, 50 kilometres north of Vancouver, for 41 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot has changed in this community,\u201d Cook said. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s part of the Britannia Beach Community Association and has watched as many development proposals have come and go for an area near Minaty Bay.<\/p>\n

Now, that area will be home to a new man-made surf park, along with residential and commercial buildings with public access to the bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis needs to be a park for everyone to enjoy this beautiful spot,\u201d Cooke said. <\/p>\n

\"DroneThe surf park will be built on a gravel lot on the east side of Highway 99, north of Britannia Village, extending down to the water near Minaty Bay. (Mike Zimmer\/CBC)<\/p>\n

The six-acre South Britannia Surf park will be set on a large gravel lot beside Highway 99. <\/p>\n

It’s being built by Spanish company Wavegarden \u2014 which has worked on 12 other surf parks worldwide. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think as a neighbour, we’re very lucky to have it right in our own backyard,\u201d Cook said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty exciting news that this is finally going to get done and we all look forward to it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Renderings of the plans, released by Tiger Bay Development, show a massive transformation for the area. <\/p>\n

The plan also includes 190 hotel rooms and 1,050 new homes \u2014 including 150 affordable units \u2014 to be built after the surf park’s completion.<\/p>\n

\"AThe six-acre surf park can host up to 100 people at a time. The waves will vary from intermediate to expert levels. (Tiger Bay Development Corp.)<\/p>\n

Tony Petricevic, head of development at Tiger Bay, said they\u2019ve received support for the surf park from locals and the sporting community. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou’ve got every other outdoor sport you can imagine, and the only one which you can’t really do is surfing,\u201d Petricevic said. <\/p>\n

He added that the pool will be massive, hosting dozens of surfers on the intermediate- to expert-level waves at a time.<\/p>\n

\"AConstruction of the residential and commercial spaces could start one to three years after the surf park is completed, according to Tony Petricevic with Tiger Bay Development. (Tiger Bay Development Corp.)Traffic congestion concerns<\/p>\n

Long-time resident Janice Brown says she’s concerned about increased vehicle congestion in the region. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s great for Britannia Beach, but the bottom line is that the traffic is terrible for everybody,\u201d Brown said. <\/p>\n

She says she doesn’t travel outside Squamish during the summer weekends to avoid being stuck in a highway shutdown. Serious collisions have closed Highway 99 in January, February, March and June this year.<\/p>\n

\"WaterThe Britannia Beach Community Association says it wanted to keep public access to Minaty Bay, which will continue as a public park with the new development. (Alanna Kelly\/CBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need an alternate route to Squamish and to the Sea-to-Sky corridor that people can come from and leave from,\u201d Brown said. <\/p>\n

Petricevic said he doesn’t think the project will add much more traffic to the highway. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a water park,\u201d Petricevic said. \u201cThere’s only 100 people in the pool at one time.\u201d <\/p>\n

An \u2018ambitious\u2019 project <\/p>\n

University of British Columbia associate professor Tom Davidoff called the surf park an ambitious project. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know how profitable it will be,” he said. “People love surfing, maybe there’s enough surfers in Vancouver to pay for what I would imagine is a very expensive surf park to create.”<\/p>\n

Construction for the surf park, which will be open year-round, is expected to begin in 2027, with completion set for 2029.<\/p>\n

\"CoastTiger Bay Development Corp. has been focused on building the surf park first, with residential and commercial plans to follow. (Mike Zimmer\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Tourism Squamish says outdoor recreation is a big driver for the local economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cSquamish welcomed two million visitors in 2024; there was $408 million in visitor spending that supported thousands of jobs and contributed $208 million to the provincial GDP,\u201d said Nikki Johnston with Tourism Squamish. <\/p>\n

The Ministry of Tourism said outdoor recreation is also a major growing sector, with participation contributing $4.8 billion annually to B.C.\u2019s economy. <\/p>\n

Johnston said they hope a new attraction like this will also help drive overnight visitation and create \u2018spin-off\u2019 benefits to the local economy, restaurants, and retail shops. <\/p>\n

She added that transportation, infrastructure, and housing to support the workforce is also top of mind with a project this size.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking sure that we’re able to protect the Sea to Sky quality of life as we have it that makes it such a desirable place to both live and visit,\u201d Johnston said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-844947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}