As CBS 42 reported, Panama City Beach resident Ray Kistler said, "No, this isn't a waterpark. This is a surf park," as the city weighed a zoning request for a 10.5-acre parcel near Pier Park in early 2025. Notices sent to households within 300 feet of the site used the word "waterpark."
The project is Shell Point Beach & Surf Club, a surf lagoon going up next to Topgolf inside Pier Park City Center. It uses Endless Surf's ES36 wave technology, the same pneumatic system that already runs at 02 SurfTown MUC in Munich. If you've heard about it secondhand, you've probably heard it filed under "new attraction" alongside Topgolf and the Bonny Read amusement park proposed nearby. That framing misses what actually makes this project interesting to anyone who lives here: it is not sized, priced, or zoned like the things people assume it is.
What's Actually Going Up on These 10.5 Acres
Endless Surf and Shell Point's own announcement lays out the plan: a family-friendly beach, a pool, a kids' splash pad, a two-story clubhouse with a restaurant and bar, a surf retail and rental shop, and a members' club with its own pool and spa. The wave lagoon sits at the center, engineered to run different wave types in different zones at the same time, from waist-high rollers for beginners to overhead barrels for advanced surfers. Endless Surf's design team calls the beginner section "The Shore" and the advanced section the "Peak Zone."
The location matters as much as the amenities. It sits inside the roughly 80-acre Pier Park City Center development, the same footprint where Topgolf opened, blocks from the actual Gulf. Developer Emerald Light Group is building it on land released by The St. Joe Company, described in city testimony as the project's landlord.
None of that alone distinguishes it from a waterpark. What does is who gets in, and what it costs.
Capacity, Pricing and the Waterpark Comparison
During the 2025 zoning review, project engineers and Shell Point's own team put real figures on the table:
- Sixty to eighty people can be in the water at a time, a hard cap tied to the wave pool's design, not a marketing choice.
- Sessions run $69 to $139 per hour, priced by age and skill level.
- The facility eliminates two specific risks that keep some people out of the Gulf: sharks and rip currents.
Compare that to a public waterpark, where crowd size scales with ticket sales and the whole point is volume. Shell Point's own team told the planning board the opposite is true here: fewer people, higher per-visit spend, and revenue that depends on quality of experience rather than headcount. That's a beach club model, not a theme park model, and the "waterpark" label was part of the hearing discussion. The hearing also addressed how the facility would operate; the approved project is a surf lagoon, not a public waterpark.
Why City Council Almost Said No
The zoning fight had nothing to do with waves and everything to do with a category. Panama City Beach's development code treats Shell Point as an "amusement" use, which normally can't sit within 1,000 feet of residential property. The site sits roughly 100 feet from the Summerwood community, which meant the developers needed a variance just to build at all.
To get it, Shell Point agreed to a 20-foot buffer with new trees planted every 60 feet along the property line and commissioned a feasibility study on noise levels to reassure the planning board the facility would comply with the city's limits. Some residents remained skeptical during the review. Others, like Kistler, argued the alternative was worse: reject the variance and risk an unknown future tenant on a commercially zoned lot instead of a use they could evaluate now.
City council approved the project unanimously not long after, according to Endless Surf's July 2025 announcement. That decision followed the buffer and noise-study commitments described during the review.
The Real Reason This Exists
Here's the detail that gets lost in every rendering and press release: Shell Point's founder, Warren Smith, grew up in Panama City Beach and left for the West Coast to chase a career as a professional surfer, because the Gulf here didn't produce the waves he needed to train on. That's not incidental backstory. It's the entire premise of the project.
Cheyne Magnusson, Endless Surf's Surf Design and Operations Manager, put it plainly, as reported by Amusement Today: the Gulf Coast has "the passion for surfing, but not always the waves." Shell Point exists to solve that specific problem, not to compete with the beach. Smith's co-founder, Karen Key Smith, has said publicly she'll finally learn to surf once the pool is running, on the condition that it comes without sharks and jellyfish. That's a different pitch than "more things to do near Pier Park." It's an admission that the natural surf conditions people already live next to aren't reliable enough for the sport to take root locally, and a bet that manufactured consistency can fix that.
It Still Isn't Florida's First
If you've seen this pitched as Panama City Beach getting something unique to the region, one number complicates that. As of mid-July 2026, industry trackers still listed Shell Point as Florida's second Endless Surf project, not its first. The Point Surf Park in Fellsmere, on Florida's east coast near Sebastian Inlet, was already substantially built by that point, with its welcome center finished and crews working on the basin, and had been targeting an opening in early September. That would make it the first Endless Surf lagoon operating anywhere in the United States, ahead of Shell Point.
Shell Point's own timeline, based on the most recent public updates, still points to a construction start in early 2026 and an opening in 2027, roughly a year behind Fellsmere. If you've been told Shell Point will be the first of its kind in the state, the most recent reporting available doesn't back that up. It backs up something more modest: approved, funded, and moving, but not first.
What This Means If You're Nearby
If you live within a few blocks of Pier Park City Center, the practical takeaways are narrower than the hype suggests. The capacity cap means this isn't going to draw waterpark-scale daily crowds through the surrounding streets. The buffer and noise study were conditions of approval, not marketing gestures, which gives residents a documented standard to point to if the finished facility doesn't match what was promised at the hearing. And the 2027 opening target means anyone tracking this as a near-term change to traffic or noise in the area has more runway than the press coverage implies.
The more durable story here isn't about parking or crowds. It's that a facility built to manufacture reliable surf is a quiet admission about what the actual Gulf out front can and can't deliver, from the person who grew up watching it. That's a fact about this stretch of coastline worth knowing whether or not you ever book a session.
If you're weighing what a property near this kind of development means for your own plans on the Emerald Coast, whether that's proximity to Pier Park, long-term rental appeal, or simply understanding how a project like this gets approved, Found Real Estate can walk through what's confirmed, what's still speculative, and what it means for a specific address. Contact us.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
