Developer Jeff Tegethoff admits he had originally thought the $400 million Oasis at Lakeport entertainment complex on Lake of the Ozarks would be open by now. But that was back when he knew a lot less about buying a timeshare... much less buying more than 2,000 of them.
He originally thought he would have bought and torn down the Lakewood Resort timeshares — which stood in the middle of the 25-acre planned development — by Dec. 2023. Instead, he says, the timeshares are the sole reason it's been noticeably quiet at the job site for nearly a month. Rumors attributing the cause to unpaid contractors, financial problems, or OSHA trouble are all untrue, he said.
"We completely underestimated how much time it would take to acquire the [Lakewood Resort] timeshares," Tegethoff told LakeExpo this week. "And then completely underestimated after the sale in October [2024] how long it would take to get all the deeds and get clean title. A hundred percent of our delays are due to the acquisition of the timeshares and getting clean title after that."
Court documents reveal that although the development group closed on the purchase of the Lakewood Resort timeshares in the fall of 2024, they didn't have clean title to all of the timeshare deeds until very recently. After the sale was completed, each title owner was required to sign-over their title to the development company (Lakeport Village LLC). And while contacting the owners of most of the timeshare deeds and obtaining their signed-over title was relatively straightforward, a small batch of deeds caused major headaches in the end.
Tegethoff's team ultimately pursued a Quiet Title action against those deeds:
the case listed 47 different parties in addition to Tegethoff's team. The case docket entries show a long string of attempts to serve court summons to the remaining individuals or, in some cases, their descendants.
Tegethoff says the last title was finally obtained on April 10, 2025.
In early 2023, when Tegethoff first entered negotiations to purchase the timeshares, things went south in a hurry. He initially offered $4.5 million for the entire complex. The timeshare board countered with a sky-high $8 million and an additional $2 million allowance for closing costs.
Tegethoff countered with $6.25 million. That was rejected. So he met their $8 million counter-offer (with the $2 million allowance), on April 19, 2023. Two years ago.
More than a month went by before the board's attorney responded that the offer had been rejected and the board would be terminating discussions with the developer over the potential purchase.
So over the next year, Tegethoff did it the hard way, buying timeshares one at a time until he gained significant negotiating clout. By the latter half of 2024, a vote was finally put out to all timeshare owners, and the sale to Tegethoff's group was approved.
"It’s uncharted waters," he told
LakeExpo. "Something I’ve not had to navigate through before."
The timeshare buildings were torn down earlier this year, before all the straggler titles had been settled. But Tegethoff said it would have been foolish to start building anything where the Lakewood Resort had once stood until he had 100% clean title.
"We've obviously been able to get done what work we could do, without having to start and stop… demoing the timeshares, blasting the parking area. But at the end of the day, we have to have a parking garage to open the amusement park, and we had to have the timeshares to complete the parking garage," he said.
And while he expressed his frustration with the lengthy delays, he speaks with determination about the plans to finish the project and open the entertainment complex. However, he admits, at this point it won't be open until 2026... probably late-summer.
"Nobody wants to get this open sooner than we do, and we've been doing everything we can to keep that accelerating, but here we are now… obviously we’re not opening this year," he said. "But we
will have the docks available for Shootout in August. And we will be able to get the amusement park open towards the end of next summer."
He says it'll now be 2027 for the planned Marriott hotel and conference center.
And while he knows there are plenty of naysayers, Tegethoff's not too worried about it. "We’re making a 50-year commitment here; this is not a dine-and-dash at the Lake."
While all is still quiet on the Oasis front, behind the scenes, schedules are being aligned and work crews are mobilizing. Equipment has begun to be staged on-site for work to resume. Tegethoff says 8 of the amusement park's 12 rides are already on-site too (just not yet assembled), and a lot of the footings and foundations are done.
Every time crews have been forced to stop, it meant a costly remobilization process to get everything rolling again. So, he said, "The next time we start, we can’t stop."
He expects passersby to see work beginning again by Memorial Day.
