A $60 million luxury surf club is coming to New York — and memberships start at an eye-watering $50,000. Here's what you get for your money

Crest has already sold roughly 60% of its memberships ahead of opening and says demand has far exceeded expectations. Memberships currently carry roughly a $50,000 initiation fee plus monthly dues of about $1,500, though early adopters were offered lower founding-member pricing and costs are expected to rise over time due to demand. The facility will cap memberships at 500 people.

“We’re kind of selling people time more than anything else,” Crest CEO Brett Portera told Moneywise. “These are really busy people that, if you can schedule an hour to three hours to go and get your waves and you know what you’re going to get every time, that’s really attractive to people.”

What is Crest Surf Clubs?

At first glance, the idea may sound niche: an elite surf club in New York. But calling it that is like calling Nazaré just another surf spot. According to Portera, it plans to be bigger than that.

“If you look at the broader tristate area, there’s a very large surfing population here,” Portera, a lifelong surfer and Long Island native, said. “The reality is you probably get somewhere between 30 and 60 quality surf days a year if you’re lucky.”

Many local beaches simply aren’t built for consistently high-quality waves, he added.

“You have these beach breaks and they’re just not meant to hold a true quality surf day,” he said. “Then you factor in swell direction, tide, wind direction, crowds, water temperature — there are all these variables.”

Crest’s answer is a heated, year-round, 1.2-acre wave basin capable of generating more than 120 customizable waves at up to seven feet high per hour.

The company’s chief technology officer, Alexandre Poirot, is a renowned fluid mechanics engineer known for designing Kelly Slater’s iconic Surf Ranch. Crest says its proprietary pneumatic wave system allows surfers in the same session to receive different customized waves every 30 seconds.

“You’re going to be able to get customized waves [and] basically build out wave playlists so you know what you’re getting,” Portera said, adding that members will be able to reserve sessions and avoid crowded lineups entirely. “You won’t be able to surf the Crest Wave anywhere else because it’s proprietary to us at the end of the day.”

More than just surfing

While surfing is the main driver of the business, Portera said Crest is ultimately designed as a luxury lifestyle and hospitality experience.

“People are going to come for the wave, but they’re going to stay for the experience,” he explained.

The club plans to offer Michelin-quality food and beverage, a co-working space, wellness amenities, spectator areas and professional coaching. Members will also be able to bring guests, family members and even clients along.

“Whether it’s pickleball, golf, social clubs, yacht clubs — it’s really tapping into that broader social club boom that we’re going through right now,” Portera said. “We’re just switching the amenity out for surfing.”

The project’s business model borrows heavily from the private golf world. Crest intentionally capped memberships at 500 people in order to preserve exclusivity and ensure members can surf multiple times per week without overcrowding.

When you look at the Long Island and New York City population alone, Portera said there are roughly 40,000 people that fit the Crest target market, describing that audience as affluent surfers or surf-adjacent consumers in the top 15% to 20% of household incomes.

The club is also designed to accommodate busy professionals, many of whom live in Manhattan and may only have small windows of free time.

“These are people that live and die by their Microsoft calendars and Google calendars,” Portera said. “Being able to give them a space where they can step away, take a call, do some work and still surf — that’s a huge part of the value.”

Alternative investors are tapping into the experience economy

While “surf is the hook,” Portera said that “the real value” is in the “community and the experience” that Crest is building around surfing.

The experience economy, after all, is a trillion-dollar industry, and it’s projected to exceed $1.2 trillion globally by 2030.

“When you look at the K-shaped economy and how people are spending their time and money, it’s all experience-based for the most part,” he said. “Social clubs and private clubs have been a big driver of that.”