Performance Boaters Team Up For New Harpers Cõv Development At Lake Of The Ozarks
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In the News: Performance Boaters Team Up For New Harpers Cõv Development At Lake Of The Ozarks
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When well-known performance boat enthusiasts and partners Greg Harris and Yvonne Alemán of South Florida started looking for property at one of their favorite waterways in the country—Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri—they didn’t have much luck finding something that checked all of their boxes. Due to the hot market at the lake and their desired location, many options sold immediately, often before even going on the market.
From left: Tyler Miller, Melissa Krantz, Greg Harris, Yvonne Alemán and Adam Seraphine are excited about Harpers Cõv, one of the newest lakefront subdivisions being developed at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks. Photo courtesy Yvonne Alemán/Harpers Cõv
Yet after determining they’d probably be better off buying a lot to build on rather than lucking out on the perfect single-family home smack dab in the middle of Osage Beach with dock access and room for their herd of Cane Corso dogs, which they breed and show, they came across a real diamond in the rough—an almost 40-acre property located at mile marker 19 in Harpers Hollow, the cove near Dog Days Bar and Grill that is home to Kelly’s Port. And that’s when Harris went to work.
“I can’t even tell you how much time I spent in the evenings looking at listings around the lake—it started to get frustrating that we couldn’t find a place to live or a place to build on,” said Harris, who has a residential and commercial real estate business in Florida. “And then in early 2021 I found this property in Osage Beach, and the light bulb went off in my head. The location was so central to everything we enjoy at the lake that it seemed almost too good to be true.”
Although the owners of the Mad Props DCB Performance Boats M37R Widebody catamaran soon found out the property would require rezoning to become a multi-family residential development, at first Alemán and Harris weren’t sure exactly how the property could be utilized within the city master plan but they had several friends in the performance boat community to use as sounding boards, including Minnesota-based real estate developer Adam Seraphine of NHH Properties, Kansas-based powerboat enthusiast and offshore racer Tyler Miller, who owns M CON, LLC, one of the largest water and sewer, underground utilities and excavating companies in the Midwest, and, of course, Mark Waddington, the local developer and investor behind Performance Boat Center, Redhead Lakeside Grill, High Tide, Roxie’s Roadhouse and The Cave Bar & Grill.
During a ride in their DCB M37R Widebody catamaran on Lake of the Ozarks in late-August, Greg Harris and Yvonne Alemán showed speedonthewater.com’s Jason Johnson the site of the new Harpers Cõv Development. Photo by Jason Johnson
“Based on location alone, I kept thinking how come no one else has moved on the property yet, and I couldn’t come up with a valid answer,” Harris said. “We looked at the shoreline, the lake depth and the options for on-water lots and second- and third-tier lots, and it just seemed like there was a huge opportunity here. Mark (Waddington) was very instrumental in encouraging the idea when we met with him at the lake in May of 2021 to get some insight on how developing a property of that size works around there. So was our friend from the lake, Adam Seraphine, who we knew had experience with large-scale developments.”
After their conversations with Waddington and Seraphine, Alemán and Harris called upon Miller, asking the Super Cat-class national champion if he could take a look at the location’s topography map and provide his opinion.
“Tyler called me back and said, ‘That’s a great piece of property in a great location,’ so I asked him if his team would provide a quick sketch showing where some lots could fit on the water and on the upper tiers,” Harris said. “I was blown away by what he sent back to me, plus he included an estimate of what it would cost to clear the property. I immediately sent it to Adam, and I think that’s what sold him.”
Seraphine, who spends a lot of his free time at Lake of the Ozarks, admitted he’s always looked around at lake properties thinking it would be interesting to own something, but it wasn’t until he saw the potential of the property Harris found that he took the inkling serious.
“Once I saw M CON’s site designs and the calculations Tyler put together to determine if our ‘back of the napkin’ calculations worked, that’s when I started to think there could be something real here,” Seraphine said. “First of all, you can’t get a better location—it’s right off the highway in Osage Beach and close to pretty much everything. If you’re a boater, like we are, it’s the center of the universe at the lake.”
Check out the slideshow above for more aerial images of the almost-40-acre property near mile marker 19 at Lake of the Ozarks. Photos courtesy Adam Seraphine/Harpers Cõv
Seraphine said that the location and the opportunity to work with the local real estate brokerage, Krantz & Associates with RE/MAX Lake of the Ozarks, were what ultimately motivated him to team up with Alemán and Harris.
“My company’s business model has always focused on location—I like to say we buy C-minus buildings or properties in A-plus locations and make them nicer,” Seraphine said. “We have a lot of expertise in working with municipalities to improve the community. We don’t have that same expertise at the lake, but we do have a couple of deeply rooted local real estate developers who are the real reason we pulled the trigger on the property.”
Melissa Krantz and Jason Whittle of RE/MAX Lake of the Ozarks, the local full-service RE/MAX real estate brokerage, have been particularly instrumental in the project, according to Alemán.
“Melissa and her team have helped lot—she presented the plans to the city, spoke on our behalf and represented all of us so credibly,” Alemán said. “Because neither of us nor Adam are from the lake, we put everything forward as a local development team with help from the Krantz family and the Millers. We could not have made the amount of progress we’ve made recently without their assistance.”
Harris said Seraphine has been the perfect partner in the property, which is called Harpers Cõv and has been divided into 16 lakeshore lots and more than 20 nonlakeshore lots plus a set of villas, all of which will have lake access through a community dock system. The property also is going to include a community pool, poolhouse, golf cart paths and other homeowners association-maintained amenities.
“Working with Adam is impressive, he’s been a great sounding board,” said Harris, who plans to build a waterfront home at Harpers Cõv, which he envisions being a community of like-minded go-fast boaters. “We both knew what our strengths and weaknesses were, and for the things we didn’t know, we found the best people to help us accomplish our goals for the property.”
Property development for Harpers Cõv has been moving along quickly since the M CON team started working on it in early September.
Seraphine, who has owned several Outerlimits V-bottoms and expects to take delivery of an MTI 390XR catamaran in December, said they’ve spent a lot of time determining the best product to deliver to their clients, many of whom are friends.
“A lot of what we’ve been doing are relationship deals whether it’s on the development side or the sales side,” Seraphine said. “As a developer my job is to put the pieces together to make sure everything gets done close to budget and on schedule, which is not always easy.
“I’ve been involved with a lot of fun projects and some boring ones, but this is the first project where I could have friends jump on board so that’s been exciting,” he added. “This is the first time ‘Adam the boater’ and ‘Adam the developer’ have crossed paths. This is a unique project that will be cool to have in the portfolio.”
Seraphine and Harris said they are working with Thomas Construction, which they were introduced to through Waddington and Brett Manire, Waddington’s partner in Performance Boat Center, to build out the community. They’re recommending the Osage Beach-based company to anyone who purchases a lot and doesn’t already have a builder they plan to bring in to construct their new home within community-established guidelines. They’re also working with Atlas Docks to design and build the community docks.
“The whole idea behind the community is to make lake living easier,” said Seraphine, who added that the group has partnered with a local lender, OakStar Bank, for financing options. “Not only can you get a single-family home with privacy and a garage, anyone who owns a place at Harpers Cõv will get the conveniences of the HOA, the docks and the desirable location.”
Harris added that he expects the lots to sell quickly and for the docks and several homes to be ready for delivery by summer of 2023. He also said that interested parties can contact Krantz & Associates for more information on the property via phone, 573-302-2355, or email, [email protected].
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