Sports Illustrated Resorts Pulls Out of Texas City Project

3 October 2025

Texas City won’t be getting a Sports Illustrated Resort after all.

Sports Hospitality Ventures, the licensee behind the SI-branded resorts, abandoned plans to bring one of the brand’s first U.S. locations to the Lago Mar Crystal Lagoon, a source familiar with the project told the Houston Business Journal.

The company announced the development in January 2024, pitching a 200-room, six-story resort on the southeast side of the 12-acre manmade lagoon. Plans called for a restaurant, beach club, cabanas and a swim-up island bar.

The project was to be designed by Houston-based Project Luong and managed by Grand Prairie-based American Resort Management, in partnership with Travel + Leisure. Groundbreaking was expected in the third quarter of last year but never materialized.

According to the source, Sports Hospitality Ventures cut off communications with Houston-based Land Tejas, developer of the 2,033-acre master-planned Lago Mar community, sometime last year.

City records back that up: Texas City engineer Kim Golden said this spring that the city hadn’t received any applications for a resort at the site. Zoning allows for either a hotel or townhomes.

Sports Illustrated Resorts, launched in 2023 through a partnership with Sports Hospitality Ventures, licenses its brand from Authentic Brands Group, which owns the magazine’s intellectual property.

The resort was supposed to anchor a planned $100 million entertainment district around the lagoon, which already includes a public beach attraction called Lagoonfest Texas and resident-only areas. The broader plan envisioned a boardwalk with retail, dining and condos. Houston-based Wan Bridge delivered a 151-unit townhome project called Crystal View at Lago Mar last year, but the resort piece never got off the ground.

Texas City isn’t an isolated case for the Sports Illustrated Resorts venture. A resort announced for Tuscaloosa, Alabama, lost its hotel component, according to the Tuscaloosa News. A proposed project in Mississippi was put on hold pending lower interest rates, while another in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was scrapped altogether after pushback from city officials and residents. Even a previously touted Orlando resort has disappeared from the brand’s website.

The only operating SI Resort is in the Dominican Republic and opened in 2022. Two more — in Chicago and Nashville — are listed as “coming soon” on the brand’s site. The Chicago launch is set to occupy Richard Branson’s Virgin Hotel Chicago site.

Meanwhile, The Lagoon Development Company is expanding across Greater Houston with its signature turquoise pools, powered by Crystal Lagoons’ water treatment technology. Lagoons in Dayton, Magnolia and Katy are in various stages of opening or construction, with more tied to entertainment districts.

— Eric Weilbacher