Desert Wake Closes Indefinitely

Just five months since their opening, Desert Wake Mecca has closed its doors at the urging of the state. The brand new facility provided the community with a man-made lake for water sports. Desert Wake saw an immediate draw from the community.

“We have close to a 1000 members now and we’ve basically been open since the second week of August,” said managing partner Brian Grantham. “So, with no marketing and no awareness, we feel great that we’ve gotten that kind of response that quickly.”

The park boasts a cable-pulley system, the only of its kind in Southern California. The revolutionary technology makes wakeboarding a sport for everyone, not just the upper class. The pulley system garnered international attention.

“We just got published in a French based magazine with over one million subscribers last month. Our momentum was great, so it definitely hurts,” said Grantham.

The momentum got stopped abruptly by a notice from the state regarding a violation of code in January. The park immediately shut its doors while they worked to get back to code. Grantham explains the state’s regulation, “The State’s considering our cables to be amusement rides so looking into the codes and regulations, even when I read the regulations, I think we fall under that amusement park ruling.”

The State says an amusement park ride means a mechanical device, aquatic device or combiation of devices, of a permanent nature that carries or conveys passengers along, around, or over a fixed or restricted route or course for the purpose of giving its passengers amusement, pleasure, thrills, or excitement.

If anyone is injured on Desert Wake’s cable, Grantham could pay a fine up to $70,000. While he works to bring everything up to code, employees are out of a job. “We have ten to twelve employees who aren’t going to have paychecks for ‘x’ amount of time, and that’s a hard one for us to swallow,” said Grantham.

However, the employees aren’t the only ones to suffer from the park’s closure. Local businesses like the Shadow Hills RV park could lose customers. “From April 1st until October, we need things for people to do and what better thing than to go out there and wakeboard when it’s 110 degrees, that’s where you want to be,” said owner Paula Turner.

Desert Wake Mecca hopes to re-open before April.