Ground Breaking for Utah’s First Wave Pool Community Celebrates UNIT Surf Pool
On March 24th, 2022 the movers and shakers responsible for leading the development of Southern Shores as well as its supportive community of lot owners came together to commemorate the start of construction!
Southern Shores will feature the world’s first private UNIT Surf Pool with a wave over 50 ft wide, as well as a private ski lake, and private 2.0 wakeboarding cable lake. These manmade lakes will be surrounded by beautiful custom homes to create Utah’s first private surf community.
It could not have been a more beautiful Southern Utah day, with clear blue skies, bright sunshine, a remarkable view of the Zion peaks, and the sweet, sweet background hum of earth movers hard at work to create this revolutionary new private surf community.
The team had amazing words to share at the ceremony and tons of great insight into how this dream came to be and what it’s taken to get to this point!
“We started working on this project about eight and half years ago and we’ve gone through several pieces of property, several water shares, several water rights, and several city denials, and just several different obstacles to get us to this point. When I think about this journey, the main thing that comes to mind is gratitude, gratitude to be able to follow a dream and build this lake.” Brittany Christensen, Project Director of Southern Shores.
“I’m also so glad I married someone that can dream along with me.” Brittany Christensen introduces her husband and partner in this venture Jason Christensen of Immaculate Homes.
“As a builder, I’ve always had the goal to build a nice custom home community where we can have that nice beach feeling. The feeling where you go out the back door and can just feel what it is like to live on the water! That is our goal with Southern Shores, to give everybody a nice place to live with that nice coastal feel out here in the desert… we are building a desert oasis.” – Jason Christensen, Immaculate Homes custom home builder and Partner in Southern Shores
“Growing up I had two passions: I absolutely loved watersports. I was big into waterskiing and when wakeboarding came out, when Tony Finn started Wake Tech, I got big into wakeboarding… I probably spent 3 days a week on the lake. And the other passion I had was to build things. I’ll never forget one day driving past this retention pond and thinking, I wonder how hard it is to build a lake. It was that day that it became a dream of mine, and that dream shortly became a reality.” -Cody Larkin, Salt Lake Excavating and Partner in Southern Shores
“In developing this vision, we knew we wanted to incorporate surfing. We looked at several different surf technologies until we finally found this technology from UNIT! We knew we had to see it, so we went to Italy to surf this wave, and we just fell in love with it! It was so fun, and we all learned how to surf in probably less than an hour! We spent 2 days surfing it and we had such a great time.”- Brittany Christensen
“This is going to be the only place in the world where you can Surf, Wakeboard, and Waterski in a development, IN THE WORLD! This is a truly groundbreaking place and groundbreaking experience.” Tony Finn, Founder of Liquid Force Wakeboards.
“We are stoked to bring REAL SURFING to Utah! UNIT Surf Pool is the world’s first floating surf pool, perfect for this lake. It is also the most efficient and sustainable deepwater artificial surf technology on the market. Its super easy for beginners to learn on and a lot of fun for pros. Developing surfers get a lot of repetition and opportunities for progression so you can get really good, really fast!” – Tony Finn
Building the Southern Shores dream has been no easy feat to date. Cody Larkin, avid mountaineer, states “we’re only in the middle of this journey.” He makes the comparison of mountaineering to developing this project and community.
1. Mountaineering Team = Development Team
“A team that will have the energy to withstand all the physical and mental challenges that we are going to go up against to get to the top of that peak.”
2. Pick a Route = Find the Land
3. Bring the Right Gear = The Right Engineering, Construction, and Design Groups
4. The Uphill Climb = Getting the Design Approved by the City
(in this case, an 8-year uphill climb!)
5. The Summit = Starting Construction
6. Coming Down the Mountain to make it all a Success = Building a healthy Community
“We say that we are building this lake, but it is not a lake that we are building, we are building a community. A community of the finest people that all I have similar interests.” Cody Larkin
To the lot owners, “All of you are visionaries, and I am fully confident that the reward at the end of this will be so great. That this community that we are building will be one of the greatest blessings of our life.”– Cody Larkin
“We are just so incredibly excited to be a part of this revolutionary development and community!”
-Lou & Trish, lot owners and Southern Shores Community Members.
It’s safe to say that the whole community is beyond thrilled on their decision to invest in and join this vision, Utah’s first Private Surf Community, Southern Shores.
