Point Man at the Ridge: Jim Shirato's Indian Ridge is set to transform Branson West

The office serves as the nerve center for Indian Ridge, a 900-acre multifaceted resort community taking shape near Branson West in rural Stone County.

The walls are covered with architectural drawings of town homes, mounted fish replicas with lures protruding from their mouths and an oversized plat of the sprawling development directly behind Shirato’s desk. He swivels in his chair, using a laser pointer to illustrate the aspects of the $1.6 billion project.

“It’s not economy living,” Shirato said. “It’s a multigenerational mixed-use development.”

Situated near Table Rock Lake and Silver Dollar City, Indian Ridge will be built in four phases encompassing 2,440 homes, an eight-story resort hotel with an adjoining $35 million indoor water park and a 18-hole golf course boasting five manmade lakes.

Infrastructure for the first phase is in place, and Shirato said $138 million of construction on condominiums, town homes, log homes and single-family homes should begin later this month. All 45 log homes are presold, and Shirato said 140 town home units have been sold at $498,000 apiece to buyers from California, Nevada, Texas and New Mexico.

Shirato also is reviewing offers from six developers interested in building three- and four-story Tuscany-themed condo towers that will house 387 units ranging in price from $480,000 to $1.3 million.

But before his real estate group begins preselling those condos, Shirato said a certain percentage of log homes and single-family homes must be built. Those rooftops will push up the resort community’s appraised property value and attract quality commercial tenants to shopping areas at two main entrances on state highways 13 and 76, he said.

“The common denominator in development is the number of homes plus the type of amenities,” Shirato said. “That’s what will drive prices up.”

‘Laborious effort’

Despite a noticeable lack of building activity at the Indian Ridge site, Shirato has been working tirelessly on the project since ground was broken in January 2006.

Establishing community improvement and transportation development districts for the development took months, Shirato said. County planning and zoning approval and an intergovernmental agreement with Stone County and Branson West also were time-consuming.

“It’s a laborious effort,” he said. “All of these government things are.”

Laborious but necessary, said Stone County Presiding Commissioner George Cutbirth.

“I told him we’ve never done anything of this magnitude in Stone County,” Cutbirth said. “There’s been in the past – under different commissions – some real boo-boos made on developments. … We told him upfront that we were going to move cautiously, and we were going to be checking everything to make sure it’s been done correctly.”

An engineering inspector from Branson West has routinely visited the site to supervise infrastructure put in place for the project’s first phase, which required millions of dollars in studies before work could begin, Shirato said.

The bustle of building will soon be evident at Indian Ridge, which was once inhabited by Osage Indians. Shirato and members of his family-owned company even met with leaders of the Cherokee Nation to learn more about the land’s Native American heritage – a theme throughout the development.

The resort’s logo prominently features an arrowhead, lampposts will have fixtures that resemble teepees, and the hotel will house a 3,500-square-foot Indian history center.

Shirato said market research suggests that Indian Ridge will feed off Branson’s family-oriented tourism industry, which drew 7.8 million people in 2006. The number of visitors in first-quarter 2007 increased 9 percent compared to the same period last year.

Word about Indian Ridge has spread to the coasts, where expensive homes, high costs of living and traffic congestion have prompted many people to rethink their lifestyle.

Kip and Mary Hurley, of Maryland, were recently exploring the Branson area in a rental car with their three children when they happened upon the resort community. After touring the property with Shirato, the Hurleys agreed to buy five lots and relocate Kip’s title insurance agency, Great Lakes Title and Escrow Co., to Indian Ridge.

“The combination of … lake access, residential access and business access all at the same point makes it hard to ignore,” Kip Hurley said. “And the bottom line is it’s a great place to raise a family.”

Hurley is particularly excited about the water park, which he described as the development’s “knockout punch.”

Permanent changes

Indian Ridge will transform the area around Branson West and will likely be annexed into the town of about 400.

“It’s going to change the entire area in a lot of ways,” Commissioner Cutbirth said.

Clearing trees for new construction will forever change the appearance of pristine hills and valleys that have long been part of the county’s scenic charm, Cutbirth said. An agreement between Shirato and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stipulates that nearly a third of Indian Ridge will remain in its natural state.

Traffic on the state highways around Indian Ridge, once it’s complete, will jump to an estimated 23,000 vehicles a day, Cutbirth noted.

“The flip side of that is the positive economic impact it will have on the area, with the golf course, the indoor water park, convention center and all the other commercial entities,” he said.

About 650 employees will be hired to run the resort, and that doesn’t count those employed by its commercial tenants, which already include two doctor’s offices, a bank, a national coffee chain and two restaurants.

Shirato is still seeking “compatible commercial entities,” which might include a movie theater, bowling alley or extended-stay hotel.

Indian Ridge Phase I Specs

140 town homes – $498,000 apiece

387 condominium units – $480,000 to $1.3 million each

45 log homes – $337,000 to $716,000 each

243 single-family lots – $77,000 to $216,500 per lot

The entrance to the first phase is on Highway 76, near Branson West. The estimated completion date is late 2008.