Gotcha Glacier Developers Say Construction Funds ‘Imminent’

Developers of that proposed indoor snowboarding, bodyboarding and skate park in Anaheim swear their oft-delayed Gotcha Glacier is now on track. Construction financing “is imminent,” said Linda Grant Williams, a lawyer working for the Glacier of Anaheim LLC development team.

Among those awaiting the go-ahead for the $130-million structure on the Edison International Field parking lot--it would tower above the baseball stadium--is bodyboarding and body-surfing champ Michael Stewart, who has endorsed the X-sports venture and owns a small percentage of it.

The bodyboarding pools are designed with “waves” where water is shot up the face of a curved concrete structure. Bodyboarders and users of “strap boards”--sort of a cross between a strapped-on snowboard and a surfboard--will twist, turn, flip and hang as though suspended on a wall.

“It can be challenging,” Stewart, 37, said from his home in Hawaii. “When they crank the water up hard, it has some consequences. It’s hard to keep on top of it.”

The Glacier is more than a year behind its original schedule because of design and retail-leasing complications. Its cost has more than tripled from an original estimate of $40 million.

Still, “I think it’s going to happen,” Stewart says. “There’s always pessimists. A hundred years ago, when people said they were going to fly, there were skeptics. And people said we’ll never get to the moon. But this is a radical thing, and I think it’s totally happening.”