The construction of a new wave pool is planned in Brazil. but you’ll have to buy real estate to surf it. Wavegarden announced that a new private residential community was being called Fazenda Vista Verde will be built in the periphery of São Paulo, with a wave pool as an amenity for residents.
The community is created in the city of Araçoiaba da Serra, an hour and twenty minutes drive west of São Paulo. The four million square meter project developed by LN Urbanismo will be divided into at least 160 residential plots of 2,000 to 2,600 square meters each. The community and wave pool will be completed by the end of 2027.
Wavegarden already has two operational swimming pools in Brazil: Praia da Grama near São Paulo and Surfland in Garopaba. Another pool, ‘Beyond the Club’, is expected to open in São Paulo in 2025.
The common thread among all these Wavegarden pools – and all wave pools in Brazil, for that matter – is that they are not open to the public. Wave pool technologies have found that their entry into the Brazilian market cannot mimic the commonly used crowd-facing models that sell tickets to consumers. They sell the swimming pools to the one percent of Brazilians.
And it makes sense. According to the Gini index – a measure of household income inequality – Brazil is the seventh most unequal country in the world. In other words, there are a few people who have a lot of money, while most of the country has little. Developers have determined that the best way to build a swimming pool in Brazil is to attach it to luxury residential projects to boost property values ​​and sales. The American Wave Machine pool in Boa Vista Village uses the same model.
Buying land and/or building homes in these communities goes well into the million dollar range. And even at Surfland, which uses a model similar to timeshares, the buy-in to join is around $30,000.
Most Brazilian surfers will never surf in their country’s pools and Fazenda Vista Verde will be no different. That’s not to say the developers are bad; they respond to economic reality. The point is, don’t expect the wave surge in Brazil to cause the next wave of the Brazilian storm. Only the few who can afford to live in these country clubs or the well-connected will log tube time.
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