Mick Fanning Buys Into Gold Coast’s $300 Million Wavepool, Coming 2027
Your throne’s shaking, Superbank.
Yesterday, a medal was draped around Michael Eugene Fanning’s neck, making him the newest inductee into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. Three-time world champ, a man who had the foresight to turn thongs into bottle openers — now rubbing elbows with Australian luminaries like David Boon, Ian ‘Thorpedo’ Thorpe, and Cathy Freeman. About time.
To cement his immortality, Mick’s throwing in with one of the fastest-growing cash cows on the planet: wavepools. Though his investment in Palm Valley Gold Coast was only announced yesterday, Mick’s been sitting on plans to help build a synthetic wave — nestled among the Gold Coast’s finest organic features — since 2020.
“Mick’s a fucking good businessman, and he’s been in the background for three or four years now,” says Luke Altschwager, former in-house pro at Parkwood Golf course, now the owner of the property set to house the pool. “He’s a no-bullshit kind of guy. When we open, I’d love to have Mick sitting at the front door, pulling in customers. But if that doesn’t happen, he’ll definitely be on the advisory board.” Joining Mick will be Rabbit Bartholemew and Andy King — sharp tongues hired to guide the ship.
The wavepool’s just a sliver of the bigger picture at Parkwood Village, where, after the $4.5 million already spent on design, they’re about to spend $300 million AUD turning it into The Palm Valley Gold Coast Resort. A reworked 18-hole golf course, hundreds of apartments, a sports medicine centre, physiotherapy, radiology, ice baths, hot baths, contrast therapy — the whole wellness buffet; a polished shrine to achieving high performance.
The site is located near Griffith University, just a couple kilometers inland of South Straddie’s waterway. If a wavepool on the Gold Coast sounds like a bizarre addition to a stretch of coastline already choking on world-class surf, then clearly, you haven’t heard Altschwager sell it yet.
“We’ve got all the markets covered. Our ‘learn to surf’ segment taps into a massive tourism base. Come, learn to surf, get a photo in the pool, then head to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and kiss a koala. Tick the box, get that full Aussie experience,” Altschwager says.
“Then we hit the middle market. The Gold Coast has the highest per capita surfer rate in the world, and surfers here are elite by any global standard. That makes it pretty damn hard for an intermediate surfer to catch a good wave. People with some disposable cash are much better off spending a couple hundred bucks a week, getting their fix, instead of paddling around for hours just to get two waves.”
“Then comes the elite component. When it comes to high-performance surfing, you can’t just do it in the ocean alone. To truly develop as an athlete, it’s rinse and repeat in the pool, like the driving range of surfing — you can hit balls all day. But we’ve got a pontoon and two jet skis, and in less than 20 minutes, we’re doing step-offs at Straddie.”
The new pool will run on Endless Surf Tech, the same system that powers the new pool in Munich. According to Mikey Feb, who recently took the German pool for a spin, it’s “not too long, and not too short” — a Goldilocks wave.
The pool’s shaping up to mirror the luxury play at Abu Dhabi Surf, where Taj Burrow recently recalled staff so attentive that they’d peel your bananas if you asked. Altschwager, on the other hand, is laser-focused on eliminating ‘pain points,’ stressing that he’s after a “frictionless experience” for customers.
Thirty years after development gutted Kirra, and eight years from the Brisbane Olympics, a new wave lands on the Gold Coast. He giveth, and he taketh away.
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