Palm Springs Debuts New Surf Club With A Bar, Restaurant & Live Music

Just shy of a week before the Coachella festival weekends kicked off, the Palm Springs Surf Club opened at 1500 Gene Autry Trial. This was the redevelopment of a twenty acre property which was formerly a water park. In the new iteration the water slides, lazy river and swimming access remained. However, the former swimming pool was doubled in size and machinery installed in order to create on demand waves for surfing.

This beach like atmosphere plus a solid restaurant and bar program formed the basis for a club in which there was room for both incidental visitors and special events. The property itself is beautiful, framing a stunning view across both water and landscaping to the distant hills which ring the western edge of the desert. Whenever someone enters a well-developed space which has both facilities and a vista across native desert landscaping to a change in elevation the mind quiets and relaxation begins.

Coachella runs across two consecutive weeks. The festival itself runs the same lineup on both the first and second weekends beginning in the early afternoon on Friday and until the last note sounds late on Sunday evening.

I spoke with both Tyler McLean and Becky Rosen-Checa about how Goldenvoice Surf Club went about creating this first iteration. The Coachella festival is owned by AEG, and programmed by their subsidiary Goldenvoice. In 2014 Goldenvoice began organizing events beyond their field having noticed external promoters were putting on events in the greater desert area during the days leading up to and including the dates of the Coachella.

Goldenvoice along with Tyler McLean organized two weeks of EDM music events at the Palm Springs Surf Club, known for those two weeks as the Goldenvoice Surf Club. The acts themselves were booked by Goldenvoice’s Becky Rosen-Checa who brought in an extraordinary set of performers to a venue which was at that point little known. Few things are as hard as booking top flight talent to appear at a new event. As Becky noted, once you get one act to sign on, the rest tend to come along a little easier. The real magic is in grouping together acts which build excitement in the crowd as the evening progresses. That, plus understanding how to navigate the ever complicated mission of working through radius clauses which are imposed when a group booked at one place is precluded for a period of time from performing within a radius which could be as little as one hundred miles and as broad as fourteen states.

The acts booked included many who played at Coachella as well. But, here is what was interesting: The Surf Club felt like a resort with a variety of options from reserved tables and lounges to just hanging out wherever there was shade. In the grassy area nearby to the wave pool a stage had been constructed and there, with the magnificent view to the mountains was where the performance was located. People came in and out of the space all day, and as evening fell upon the park the area around the stage got much busier.

The Surf Club itself is easily 45 minutes away from the Coachella event field once traffic builds later in the afternoon. So, it was evident why many of those in attendance were not planning to go to Coachella at all, or at least not for that weekend. They were very different experiences. Coachella is a massive festival with as many as 125,000 people in attendance moving across the El Dorado polo fields and adjacent grounds between eight performance stages. The event is a seminal annual production.

But, relaxing is not the right word to describe the Coachella experience. It is however one of the ways a fan could elect to describe spending the day in and out of the water at the Surf Club, then down to the grassy lawn to dance to top flight D.J.s and other performances. Simply put, the Goldenvoice Surf Club was themed out as an adult waterpark with top level talent. Under one brand and across two weekends the GV Surf Club put on four separate and unique days of music. Unlike many of the branded events which occur during the Coachella time frames where admission is limited to those who manage to get “on the list,” at Surf Club you simply purchased a one day ticket for as little as $40 or a weekend pass for $75, plus fees.

Goldenvoice puts on other events in the dessert outside of Coachella season. They work with Tyler McLean to partner on Splash House and Desert Air, as well as partner year round with a variety of communities out in the desert.

As the Surf Club is a multi-faceted event facility, it works year round for special events, weddings, and can also simply be a place to relax. The team onsite has the capacity to deliver high caliber functions.

For the two weeks of the Coachella related programming, it was clear the work done by Tyler McLean, and the acts booked by Becky Rosen-Checa made for a terrific event. There is something magical when an experience exceeds your expectations. That’s never luck. It’s the hard work of planning, attention to detail and the knowing comfort of experience which mask the myriad tasks remaining.

Surf Club will be back next year for the festival weekends. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a layup. There is demand from the Coachella party crowd staying in Palm Springs and looking to pregame at Surf Club before heading out to the Coachella field and then likely on to the afterparties. There is even more demand for those who elect to remain in Palm Springs and skip Coachella entirely. For Goldenvoice Surf Club, the goal is to make it easier for guests to do both or either.