Hotelier Hammons plans luxury resort at Lake of the Ozarks

OSAGE BEACH, Mo. (AP) -- Springfield hotel developer John Q. Hammons is bringing his vision of luxury lodging to the Lake of the Ozarks, on a peninsula where the 15-story hotel is sure to stand out.

Hammons expects his 14th Missouri property -- a European-style hotel to be called Chateau on Lake of the Ozarks, Osage Beach -- will cost an estimated $80 million to $90 million. The hotel will have 320 rooms and more than 100,000 square feet of meeting space.

The 30-acre site, which Hammons bought in January, sits on a peninsula visible from U.S. 54 in both directions on the Grand Glaize bridge.

Osage Beach officials have been anticipating the project for more than a year and offered plenty of hopeful praise ahead of an official announcement scheduled for Wednesday.

"It will be a huge benefit and boost to the city," said Nancy Viselli, Osage Beach's city administrator. "(Hammons) builds gorgeous hotels."

Hammons, who in his mid-80's continues briskly opening properties nationwide, believes there is a market for the chateau.

"We made a pretty good, deep study of businesses located there," Hammons said Tuesday, noting the lake area draws people from St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, Omaha, Neb., and Chicago.

"There are lots of big boats, lots of big condos," he said. "People go there for weekends and special occasions. You have to build where the market is."

Condos are not part of the Hammons portfolio, which features more than 75 hotels, resorts, conference centers and other free-standing properties, such as Hammons' Chateau on the Lake in Branson.

But the project will help restock the Lake of the Ozarks area's hotel inventory, which has lost about 1,100 rooms to condo development, said Tim Jacobsen, executive director of the Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitor Bureau.

For 72-year-old Beulah Fry, however, the chateau and a proposed highway interchange project will transform the once rustic neighborhood, where she has been living for 13 years.

"It's nothing like what it used to be," said Fry, who moved to Osage Beach in the 1950s.

"I don't like the traffic," she said. "But there's not a whole much we can do."

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Information from: Springfield News-Leader, http://www.springfieldnews-leader.com