Born May 22, 1965, in Lincoln Nebraska: Merlyn Otto Vandervort II is the eldest son of Merlyn Vandervort Sr. And Patricia Vandervort. The third of five siblings, Merlyn has two older sisters: Cathy and Gloria, a younger brother Jerry, and youngest sister Valerie.
Merlyn’s father was a career Air Force Sergeant, and in 1971 was stationed at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base just outside of Kansas City Missouri. Merlyn’s father retired from the Air Force a few years later and the Vandervort family settled into a middle-class neighborhood and made Kansas City their hometown.
Shortly after Merlyn’s father retired from the Air Force, his parents purchased a small motel style apartment complex in Belton Missouri. It was this property that began Merlyn’s construction, remodeling and business experiences at a very young age. The property was a fixer upper property and Merlyn spent many afternoons and weekends of his youth renovating and working on this property. As he got older, he was actively involved in managing this and other rental properties for his family.
In 1974 Merlyn’s parents 19-year marriage ended in divorce. At about that same time, Merlyn’s two older sisters were graduating from high school and getting married. Merlyn’s father moved back to his hometown of Tomah Wisconsin. While his mother and siblings remained in Kansas City. Merlyn and his two younger siblings would spend the school year in Kansas City, then spend the summers in Wisconsin with their father.
Now a single mother with three children at home, Patricia buried herself in work. In addition to running the family’s apartment complex, she accepted a job as a property manager for a company in mid-town Kansas City. She later left that company and opened her own property management company in mid-town KC. In 1980 Merlyn’s mother was shot twice in the stomach by a tenant in one of the buildings that she was managing. Fortunately, she survived the ordeal with a full recovery, however that tragedy caused Patricia to wind down her mid-town management company and focused her attention into purchasing and managing rental houses in more suburban areas of KC. Years later, Patricia sold her apartments and rental houses to build a senior living center in Belton Missouri (Carnegie Village). In 1986 Patricia married Dean Stiles.
All these experiences had a very profound effect on Merlyn’s childhood and forced him to grow up at an early age. At the age of seventeen, Merlyn was attacked and stabbed with a knife by a tenant living in one of the apartments his family owned; fortunately, he was able to subdue the assailant and recovered from his injury.
At the early age of twelve years old, Merlyn took his first “paying” job as a dishwasher at a restaurant called “Reagan’s Restaurant”. Merlyn distinctly recalls being interviewed by the owner, the guy introduced himself and said “hi, my name’s Ronald Reagan, you know, like the actor.” Merlyn was twelve, and had no idea who Ronald Reagan the actor was, but he sure did when he voted for him for President when he ran for reelection in 1984. People often ask Merlyn If that is why he is a conservative, but Merlyn is quick to reply, “I’m a conservative not because my first real job was for a guy named Ronald Reagan, but because I was washing dishes for $1.65 per hour at the age of twelve years old”.
Some of Merlyn’s fondest memories are the summers he spent with his father on their family farm in Wisconsin. His father soon remarried a woman named Mary Day, and together they built a good life. In addition to spending the summers with his father, Merlyn also lived with his father through the school year of his sophomore and junior year of high school. Summers with his father was all about traveling around the countryside and competing in horse shows and rodeos. This is where Merlyn gained his love of the outdoors and love of animals.
Merlyn’s parents couldn’t have been more polar opposite, but Merlyn is quick to admit that he got a lot of his personality and attributes from both his parents. He gained his business drive from his mother and his love of life from his father. While he appreciates his experiences in the city, his heart will always be in the country. “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy”.
After graduating from high school in 1983, Merlyn joined the carpenters union, and later attended college for a couple of semesters at Central Missouri State University as a business and criminal justice major. One of Merlyn’s biggest regrets in life is that he didn’t finish college, not that it’s held him back professionally, but because it’s one of the only things in his life that he started and didn’t finish. Merlyn has however attended numerous industry related schools and attained every accreditation in his industry.
In 1989 Merlyn met and married Susan Crown. Susan had two children from a previous marriage: Danielle & Bryan Clifton. Merlyn and Susan had two wonderful children: Malari and Merlyn III (Trey). Merlyn and Susan’s marriage ended in 1996.
After working as the General Manager for three years for a Kansas City based restoration company (First General Services of KC), Merlyn set out to make his mark on the construction industry and founded Metro Renovators Inc. in 1989. He started the company in the back of his garage with nothing more than a couple thousand dollars he had managed to save, a pickup truck and a box of tools. A short time later he purchased and renovated an office building in Raytown Missouri, and a few years after that he designed and built a beautiful 25,000 sq. ft. office and warehouse facility in Lee’s Summit Missouri, which became his company headquarters. Merlyn also acquired two restoration companies in Springfield Missouri and expanded his business operations to Springfield and Branson Missouri.
In 1998 Merlyn’s construction companies were acquired by Inrecon, LLC and Merlyn accepted a position as the companies Regional Vice President. His responsibilities included the management of multiple offices and oversight of large catastrophic disasters all around the country. Inrecon was subsequently acquired by BELFOR USA and quickly became the largest restoration company in the world. After fulfilling a four-year contract with Inrecon/BELFOR USA, Merlyn declined a lucrative offer to continue his career path with BELFOR and set out to pursue his entrepreneurial endeavors at the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri.
In August of 2001 while still working for BELFOR, Merlyn had planned to spend a weekend at the lake, however that plan was cut short when he received a call that he was needed on a large job and he had to head back to Kansas City. While leaving the lake he stopped to fuel u, and as fate would happen, while he was filling up his car with gas, a pickup truck pulled up on the other side of the gas pump, and out stepped the most beautiful woman Merlyn had ever seen. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail thru a ball cap she was wearing and big blue eyes, Merlyn was immediately smitten with her wholesome girl next door natural beauty and a big smile that captured his heart in an instant. The once sworn bachelor knew that moment that he had met his future wife. In 2004 Merlyn married Christina Dawn Paulsen (Vandervort). They have a son, Gunner as well as Merlyn’s two older children from his previous marriage, Merlyn III and Malari.
Shortly after selling his KC and Springfield based construction companies, Merlyn began buying up large tracts of shoreline and other lakefront properties at the Lake of the Ozarks. In 1999 Merlyn founded the Horny Toad Entertainment Complex, and ultimately the Resort & Yacht Club at Toad Cove (now Camden on the Lake), a fifty-million-dollar luxury resort development and marina. The Resort is a condominium hotel with 116 luxury suites that are available for purchase. The concept of a condominium hotel or condotel, is to allow people to purchase a nice suite in a luxury hotel, that they can use while vacationing, and when they aren’t using their suite, the hotel management company would rent it out for the suite owner, for a share of the rental revenue. It’s a great way to own a nice property, with the ability to offset the cost of ownership by enrolling it in a rental management program. This was the perfect product for the Lake of the Ozarks. Merlyn’s business plan and loan commitment was to presell fifteen million dollars in condotel suites, these funds were to be applied to the loan upon completion of the project and closing on the purchased suites. This would also give Merlyn the ability to draw back the necessary funds needed for operating capital during the stabilization period. That goal was met, and 47 units were pre-sold at an average price of $320k, all with solid contracts and 10% non-refundable deposits.
Unfortunately, the Resort was completed in the middle of 2008 amidst the worse global economic collapse since the Great Depression. The recession caused 22 of the 47 buyers to breach their contracts which left the project with a seven-million-dollar shortfall, and no ability to draw back the funds needed to cover operating costs during the stabilization period. Merlyn managed to self-fund the operating costs throughout 2009 but economic conditions continued on a downward spiral and by January 2010 Merlyn was forced to make the very painful decision to liquidate the resort development that he had spent the previous twelve years of his life developing. This move cost Merlyn twenty-five million dollars in equity that he had invested in the development, but it was a strategic decision that allowed him to survive the perfect economic storm with his good credit intact and afforded him the ability to protect all his other assets and focus on his other business endeavors.
Part of Merlyn’s contract with Inrecon/BELFOR was a non-compete agreement for a period of time that would prevent him from conducting business within a hundred miles of any BELFOR office. Lake of the Ozarks was just far enough away that would allow Merlyn to start a new construction company without violating that agreement. In 2002 Merlyn founded Millennium Restoration & Construction Services, Inc, and later re-branded the company using the name of his original company; Metro Renovators & Construction Services, Inc. This company designed and built some of the nicest luxury homes at the Lake of the Ozarks, and numerous commercial projects including Camden on the Lake hotel, and the Tri County YMCA.
In early 2010 after recovering from the devastation of the recession, Merlyn purchased the old Everett’s restaurant in Lee’s Summit Missouri. The property had been sitting vacant for a couple of years and had been gutted due to broken water pipes that had destroyed the interior of the building. Merlyn redesigned and renovated the entire building and opened Rumors Steakhouse. In 2013 Merlyn sold the business to Andy Lock and Domhnall Malloy and they rebranded the restaurant The Summit Grill. They leased the building from Merlyn until they finally purchased it from him in November 2021.
A Biography on Merlyn Vandervort wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Horse Power Ranch, a beautiful eleven hundred acre ranch in Brumley Missouri, about ten miles east of Osage Beach MO. Merlyn started buying up large farms starting with a 570 acre tract he purchased in 1999. He subsequently purchased 4 other adjoining farms making the ranch complete. All this property was very rough, and completely timbered with barely an acre of open ground anywhere. Merlyn spent years clearing and sculpting the land into one of the most beautiful properties in the world, complete with numerous lakes and ponds and hundreds of acres of luscious, fenced pastures and a thriving home to four hundred head of Angus cattle and a half dozen horses. The crown jewel of the ranch is a magnificent thirteen thousand square foot luxury log home situated squarely in the center of the ranch overlooking a private lake with a mile long gated private driveway off the main highway. In November 2021, Merlyn received an offer to purchase the ranch that was too good to overlook, and with their kids all grown and moved away, Merlyn & his wife Dawn sold the ranch. A decision he regretted the day they closed, and regrets to this day. That said, the purchase price of the ranch was among the highest price ever paid in Missouri for any residence, estate, farm or ranch.
In November 2020 while riding his motorcycle with his wife Dawn, they stopped by to check out a property that someone had told them about, a restaurant called Fat Polly’s Pub in Lake Ozark Missouri. Merlyn’s first impression was that it was the ugliest building that he had ever seen, and probably just needed to be torn down. Merlyn was however very impressed with the great location and fantastic lake front view. Merlyn arranged to meet with the owners of the restaurant who also owned an adjacent hotel property. The owners weren’t interested in selling the restaurant, because the lower level of the restaurant facility contained all the meeting space for the hotel. Ultimately Merlyn was able to convince them that because of the extensive renovations and improvements he planned to make to the restaurant that it would be a net gain for the hotel. One year later, on the eve of Thanksgiving 2021 The Encore Lakeside Grill & Sky Bar was open and quickly became the go to destination at the Lake. Six months later, Merlyn purchased the hotel, completed extensive renovations and rebranded it as The Resort at Lake of the Ozarks. What was once an old, dilapidated hotel and restaurant, is now one of the nicest resort developments and entertainment complexes at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Why the Encore? Websters definition of Encore is “An audiences demand for a repeat performance”; you might say the Encore is Merlyn’s repeat performance from The Horny Toad Complex and Camden on the Lake hotel.
Merlyn’s professional designations and certifications include:
CR – Certified Restorer – National Institute of Disaster Restoration
CGR – Certified Graduate Remodeler – National Assn. of Home Builders
CMB – Certified Master Builder – National Assn. of Home Builders
CPBC – Certified Professional Business Coach – Certified Professional Business Coach’s Alliance
Certified Lead & Asbestos Abatement Contractor – University of Kansas
Merlyn has authored numerous articles and books including:
Make it Happen – Motivational book available on Amazon
The Lost Decade – Political Documentary Book available on Amazon
RS Means Construction Cost Estimating Manuel (Co-Author)
The 10 & 10 Myth – The International Edition of the Blue Book.
