The Tan-Tar-A resort in Osage Beach looks like a place lost in the woods.
Shades of faded brown and green complement many of the main corridors and guest areas inside the old hunting lodge-themed resort in the Lake of the Ozarks and create a closed and cold feeling for visitors. A nearly two-year long renovation will change the resort's identity to a seaside theme while evoking the warm, bright and happy themes of Jimmy Buffett.
"It's just a lot brighter," said Ann Walters, Tan-Tar-A director of sales. "It's not brown. It's not earth tones. It's bright. It's crisp."
Built in 1960, Tan-Tar-A features 494 rooms on 1,150 miles of shore line at the Lake of the Ozarks. In July 2017, Miami investment firm Driftwood Acquisitions & Development bought the resort and partnered with Palm Beach Florida-based Margaritaville Holdings to change the theme of the resort into a sea-side theme.
Management hopes most of the work will be finished and that the resort will become the Margaritaville Lake Resort in April. The project will cost about $10 million, according to the Springfield Business Journal. Walters declined to name the price tag for the project and said only the project cost would be a "multi-million (dollar)" project.
Some of the changes are big. A new LandShark Bar & Grill restaurant is themed in the style of Landshark Lager and features indoor and outdoor seating for 280 people. The restaurant sits next to the lake and also has a pool and swim-up bar. Fred Dehner, Tan-Tar-A general manager, said the restaurant will also be accessible from about 50 boat slips that will serve the restaurant.
The restaurant is complete now, but will not open until this spring when Tan-Tar-A's 2019 season begins. When it opens, the restaurant will offer American fare such as fish tacos, nachos and wings.
Dehner said he hoped the restaurant would have opened in the summer of 2018, but damage from a wind storm on the Lake of the Ozarks pushed back the opening date.
"We got it done by the end of the summer," Dehner said. "But it's not worth opening for the winter, so we chose to wait until the spring."
A new tiki-hut themed bar next to an already existing pool sits next to the old Black Bear Lodge restaurant. Regalia celebrating deer, caribou and moose hunts previously adorned the interior.
All guest rooms, save for a handful of suites, will see their carpeting ripped out and wood flooring installed. New furniture, a fresh coat of teal paint, new bathroom fixtures and new doors will also be added to every room undergoing the change.
Others changes are more subtle. Dark brown paint on most buildings was replaced with a lighter sand colored shade of brown. Navy-colored shingles will replace brown shingles on most roofs. Exterior areas once accented with orange paint have already been painted sky-blue.
Not all of the changes have been made yet.
Two years ago, the lobby of the main building at the resort underwent a renovation that transformed that space into a modern area. The lobby will be redone again though to fit the new theme.
Tile flooring will replace carpet, and the hotel bar in the lobby will be transformed into a Margaritaville-themed restaurant, among other changes that will be made to the lobby. Changes will also be made to the resort's gift shops.
Many things at the resort will change, but not all. Most of the changes being made to fit the Margaritaville theme focus on guest amenities. Conference rooms and banquet halls underwent renovations in 2013 that replaced flooring, carpeting and wall coverings, Walters said.
Before the Margaritaville renovation, Tan-Tar-A underwent its largest renovation in 2001 when the resort built a new tower with 133 guest rooms, Dehner said.
As the clock ticks down to April, Walters and Dehner said the staff is excited for the next tourist season to start.
"It's going to be a different place come this spring," Dehner said.