By Eric Engelbert

UPDATE: APRIL 2026

The Newport Beach City Council has rescinded its October 2024 approval of the Snug Harbor Surf Park, a Wavegarden-powered wave lagoon that would have consumed roughly five acres of the Newport Beach Golf Course. The reversal came after a local group, Save Newport Beach Golf Course, gathered more than 6,100 verified petition signatures, enough to force either a public ballot or a rescission. Council members chose to rescind. The developer still holds approval for a scaled-down 20,000-square-foot version of the project, and the underlying golf course lease on the county-owned portion of the land runs through 2027. No housing proposal has been filed. But with the course sitting squarely inside the city's Airport Area housing overlay, the post-2027 question is no longer theoretical.

A quiet 18-hole executive course just became Orange County's most-watched piece of land.

The Newport Beach Golf Course at 3100 Irvine Avenue has been a fixture between the 55 and 73 freeways, tucked alongside John Wayne Airport, since 1976. It's an 18-hole executive layout designed by David and Harry Rainville. It plays to 3,216 yards at par 59, has a lighted driving range, and is one of the few public spots in this part of Orange County where you can grab a quick twilight round after work. It's also a course I've played many times over my 30 years in the game.

For most of its life, it was unremarkable in the best possible way, just a reliable, accessible public course. That changed in 2024, when a new proposal landed on the city's agenda that would have fundamentally altered what the property was for.

How the Wave Pool Fight Started

In September 2024, the Newport Beach City Council approved a $277,000 impact study, paid for by the developer, Back Bay Barrels LLC, to evaluate a Wavegarden-powered surf park on the golf course site. The company, founded by Newport Beach surfer Adam Cleary, had a sweeping vision: a roughly five-acre surf lagoon capable of producing up to 1,000 waves per hour, a three-story clubhouse, a surf academy, restaurants, retail, fitness and yoga space, and 20 bungalow-style athlete accommodations.

THE CATCH FOR GOLFERS:

The surf park would have sliced the course in half, eliminating three of the 18 holes, the putting green, the pro shop, the driving range, and the restaurant. The remaining 15 holes would have been split onto opposite sides of the surf lagoon. The Southern California Golf Association publicly questioned whether a chopped-up course could survive financially, and anyone who has managed tee sheets for a living would have raised the same question.

In October 2024, the City Council unanimously approved the project along with a general plan amendment that would have expanded the developer's footprint from 20,000 to 60,000 square feet. That vote is what lit the fuse.

The Petition That Stopped It

Within weeks, a grassroots group called Save Newport Beach Golf Course began collecting signatures for a referendum to overturn the general plan amendment. By the end of 2025, they had submitted more than 6,100 valid signatures, clearing the threshold required to force the council to either (a) place the question on a ballot or (b) rescind the approval outright.

January 2026: The Newport Beach City Council voted 6-0 (with one recusal) to rescind the general plan amendment. The developer still has the right to move forward on a 20,000-square-foot version, but the full-scale surf park is off the table.

If this dynamic sounds familiar, it should. It's a near-mirror of what's happening up the freeway in Irvine, where voters are wrestling with how much say they should have over the redevelopment of Oak Creek Golf Club. (See our blog post on the Oak Creek Golf Course redevelopment proposal.) Two different cities, two different proposals, one very similar fight: a long-standing golf course, a developer with a big vision, a state pushing hard on housing production, and residents using every procedural tool they have to slow it down.

A Loss for Golfers, Then a Win, at Least for Now

The Newport Beach Golf Course is not a prestige venue, and that's exactly the point. It's a working-person's course. It's where juniors hit their first real greens, where seniors walk nine after lunch, where the range stays full until the lights shut off.

FROM A SCRATCH HANDICAP:

As someone who has played golf at a scratch level for two decades, I can tell you: executive courses and lighted ranges are how most players in this county actually keep their games sharp. You don't prepare for a weekend round at Pelican Hill by practicing in your garage.

If the full surf park had gone through, the displacement would have been immediate. Newport Beach has very few public golf options to absorb that kind of traffic:

  • Hyatt Newport Back Bay Golf Course (9-hole)
  • Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course (Irvine)
  • Costa Mesa Country Club (Los Lagos and Mesa Linda)
  • Tustin Ranch Golf Club

For now, the course stays. But the structural pressures that made the surf park proposal attractive haven't gone anywhere.

Why Housing Is the Next Question

Here's the piece that often gets lost in the surf-park headlines: the county of Orange owns the back nine of the Newport Beach Golf Course, and that ground lease expires in 2027. The privately owned portion has its own timeline. Either way, this property's land-use future is up for renegotiation within roughly 18 months.

THE HOUSING PRESSURE AROUND THIS SITE:

• Newport Beach must plan for 4,845 new units under state RHNA mandates

• The Airport Area has a 2,577-unit development limit and is the city's primary housing engine

• The Irvine Company is converting MacArthur Court offices into 700 residential units

• Uptown Newport is planned for 1,200+ units at full buildout

In other words: the entire neighborhood around this golf course is being rezoned and redeveloped for housing. A 50-acre flat parcel inside an active housing overlay, with a lease expiring in 2027, adjacent to a major employment center, is not the kind of land that quietly stays a par-59 executive course forever. No formal housing proposal has been filed. But if you're handicapping what happens next, residential is the most probable use, not surfing.

Will 4,000+ New Homes Crash the Newport Beach Market?

This is the question I get most often once the topic of Newport Beach's state-mandated housing numbers comes up, and the short answer is no. Adding 4,000+ units across the Airport Area, Newport Center, Uptown Newport, MacArthur Court, and potentially the golf course site over the next several years is not going to crater values in a city where demand has consistently outpaced supply for decades.

ORANGE COUNTY NEW CONSTRUCTION
Homes built in 2025 and 2026, last 6 months

54
AVERAGE DAYS ON MARKET
38
MEDIAN DAYS ON MARKET

Those are not numbers consistent with oversupply.

In a soft market, brand-new inventory is the first thing to sit, and it's not sitting. Buyers are still paying up for new product, and builders are still hitting their pro forma absorption rates.

Newport Beach specifically is a supply-constrained market, not a supply-flooded one. The units being added are spread across multiple submarkets, delivered over a multi-year timeline, and are largely high-density multifamily in the Airport Area, not direct competitors to coastal single-family inventory in Corona del Mar, Balboa Island, the Peninsula, or the Bluffs. Those are two different buyer pools.

TRACK THE NUMBERS YOURSELF

I publish two reports every month so you can watch this play out in the data rather than the headlines:

→ Newport Beach Real Estate Market Report (local inventory, pricing, days on market, and absorption rate by neighborhood)

→ Orange County Housing Report (the macro county-level picture alongside Newport's local trends)

The California Pattern

Nationally, the golf industry has been shrinking since the mid-2000s. Between 2011 and 2020, more than 150 U.S. courses closed each year while only a handful opened. In 2023 alone, the U.S. saw roughly 90 closures against just 24 new openings. California has led the decline. Stevinson Ranch, Malibu Golf Club, Mile Square, Sunol Valley, and others have all gone dark over the past 25 years. The driver is always the same combination: rising water and maintenance costs, soft demand for mid-tier public play, and land values that make redevelopment impossible to turn down.

That's the macro backdrop for both the Newport Beach Golf Course and Oak Creek. It's why these fights keep happening. And it's why, even when the community wins a round, like the Snug Harbor referendum, the underlying pressure doesn't go away.

A Market That Still Has Demand

Newport Beach real estate has held up through every national slowdown of the past two decades, and the Airport Area is arguably the most important growth zone in the city. Proximity to John Wayne, easy access to the 73 and 405, walking distance to Fashion Island and the Bluffs, and a full conversion of nearby offices into housing have made this submarket a focal point for both buyers and institutional capital. (See our blog post on the Newport Beach housing element ruling.)

If and when the golf course land transitions, demand will not be a question. The question will be what gets built and how many votes it takes to get there.

Is This a Done Deal?

NO. The surf park's full-scale version is rescinded. A 20,000-square-foot scaled-down version is still technically alive on paper. The golf course itself continues to operate today.

The county has signaled it wants to keep golf on the land post-2027, but no binding commitment has been announced, and the state's housing pressure is not going to lessen between now and then.

What changed in 2026 is the political reality. Newport Beach residents just demonstrated, as Irvine residents have done around Oak Creek, that they will use the initiative process to reshape land-use decisions they don't like. Any future proposal here, whether it's housing, a scaled surf park, or something else, will have to reckon with that.

The Trade-Offs

There's a real tension running through every one of these fights, and it's worth naming honestly. California has a severe housing shortage. Orange County cities are under state mandates to zone for thousands of new units. At the same time, open space, recreation, and community character are also real values. Once a course is gone, it's gone. No city in Orange County has built a new public 18-hole course in decades.

The Newport Beach Golf Course fight is not really about surfing versus golfing. It's about who gets to decide what a piece of land is for, and how much weight long-standing recreational use carries when weighed against housing production targets set in Sacramento. That same tension is driving the Oak Creek debate in Irvine, and it will drive the next one too.

Explore Homes for Sale in Newport Beach and Surrounding Cities

If you're considering a move or investment in the area, explore current listings in these Orange County cities near the Airport Area:

  1. Newport Beach: Homes for Sale in Newport Beach, CA
  2. Costa Mesa: Homes for Sale in Costa Mesa, CA
  3. Irvine: Homes for Sale in Irvine, CA
  4. Tustin: Homes for Sale in Tustin, CA
  5. Santa Ana: Homes for Sale in Santa Ana, CA
  6. Lake Forest: Homes for Sale in Lake Forest, CA

Public Golf Courses in Newport Beach and Surrounding Cities

If you're trying to stay in the game while this land-use fight plays out, here are the most accessible public options nearby:

Newport Beach:

Newport Beach Golf Course: The 18-hole lighted executive course at the center of this story, still open, still one of the few places in this part of the county where you can get a full round in after work.

Hyatt Newport Back Bay Golf Course: A 9-hole par-3 layout at the Hyatt Regency, good for short-game work and a quick nine.

Pelican Hill Golf Club: Two Tom Fazio championship courses with ocean views. The premium option in the area.

Costa Mesa:

Costa Mesa Country Club: Two 18-hole public layouts (Los Lagos and Mesa Linda), probably the most accessible full-length public golf near Newport Beach.

Irvine:

Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course: Irvine's original public course, with lakes and mature trees.

Strawberry Farms Golf Club: A full-length championship course with a more rural feel than you'd expect given the location.

Oak Creek Golf Club: Still open, but facing its own redevelopment proposal. See the Oak Creek blog linked above for the full story.

Tustin:

Tustin Ranch Golf Club: Easily the best daily-fee experience in the area, with a genuine private-club feel.

Santa Ana:

Willowick Golf Course: The oldest 18-hole public course in Orange County, and itself the subject of long-running redevelopment conversations.

River View Golf Course: A quirky, tight layout along the Santa Ana River.

2026 Update: Surf Park Rescinded, Housing Question Still Open

The most important development in 2026 is the Newport Beach City Council's January vote to rescind the general plan amendment that would have enabled the full-scale Snug Harbor Surf Park. That decision was a direct response to a referendum drive that gathered more than 6,100 signatures through the Save Newport Beach Golf Course campaign. The 6-0 rescission vote (with one recusal) eliminated the developer's right to expand into the additional 40,000 square feet that the October 2024 approval had authorized. A 20,000-square-foot scaled version remains technically viable.

THE BIGGER QUESTION, STILL UNRESOLVED: What happens when the lease expires in 2027? The county has said it wants to preserve golf on the land, but no binding agreement is in place. The course sits inside the Airport Area housing overlay, where Newport Beach is under significant state pressure to accommodate thousands of new units. No housing proposal has been filed. No ballot measure on the long-term use of the site has been scheduled. Save Newport Beach Golf Course and other community groups remain organized and active, and as the Oak Creek fight up the freeway has shown, voter-initiative tools can meaningfully shape the outcome when residents choose to use them.

The final round hasn't been played on this course yet. But the back nine, literally and politically, is where the next decision will be made.