Water Damage Restoration in Overland Park, KS

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KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas. Share your story idea with Olivia.

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With a couple of days left until Halloween decorations come down, there’s a unique display of pumpkins at an Overland Park home you can’t miss.

What started as two pumpkins 14 years ago has grown to more than 300.

“It's more of an obsession than just a straight hobby,” said Daniel Taber, who recently moved his family from California to Kansas.

When his son was born 14 years ago, Taber began carving foam pumpkins.

“We did really enjoy carving them the first year. And then the next year, carved a few more, few more,” Taber said.

The Taber home quickly became the “pumpkin house," a title the family gratefully accepted.

“You know, you either lean into it or you don't," he said. "We obviously leaned into it with now a little over 320-some pumpkins."

The Tabers' obsession also supports a good cause; they started collecting donations from visitors while living in California.

“We were like, okay, let's start at least taking some cash donations for the food banks,” Taber said.

This year, the family raised more than $700 for Harvesters, meeting their new neighbors in the process.

“We ended up meeting, we'll say, pretty much everybody on this street that first weekend,” Taber said. “As the word-of-mouth spreads, meeting a lot of other folks.”

Taber said kids have loved characters like Paw Patrol or Mickey Mouse, and teenagers have been big fans of the Taylor Swift carvings.

However, Taber can't pick just one pumpkin.

“It's kind of hard to always pick your favorite,” he said. “It's almost like picking out your favorite kid.”

If you want to see the pumpkin house, it's on the corner of 124th Terrace and Nieman in Overland Park.

While there, you can donate to Harvesters and/or suggest what pumpkin you’d like to see next year.

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OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — The AdventHealth Sports Park at Bluhawk opened its doors for the first time on Saturday, welcoming hundreds of guests into the 420,000 square foot building for the first time.

“It’s been an incredible turnout,” said general manager Greg Jackson. “It’s an amazing facility, can’t wait to share it with the rest of the town,” he said.

The building includes hardwood courts for volleyball and basketball, turf fields and a 1500-person ice hockey arena, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“16 lanes of bowling, a road glide, golf simulators, crazy darts and amazing arcade,” said Jackson. There’s facilities geared towards parents as well, with a workout facility, bars, a café, a restaurant and more all in the same space. “This place is for everybody. You don’t have to play sports to come here,” Jackson said.

As a part of their grand opening celebrations, Ken Morrow was on hand with his Olympic gold medal from his time on the United States Men’s hockey team in 1980.

“The first time I walked in here, I thought ‘what a great facility!’ Kansas City can be very proud. Everything’s under one roof,” Morrow said. “When the parents and the grandparents are able to come to a place like this to keep everybody busy? Yeah, nothing better. I could see spending a whole day in this place.”

The space is expected to host a lot of people in its first year.

“We’re anticipating 800,000 people through this door. So, to put that in perspective, that’s more than the Chiefs draw in a home season,” Jackson said. They’re anticipating hosting national and regional sports tournaments at the facility in the future.

One of the questions on a lot of parent’s minds was, ‘where was this when we were kids?’

“I know, right?” said Cynthia Page. “They didn’t have anything like this! We had to go play in the creek! It’s really nice, I like everything that they have here.”

A pair of local developers is teeing up plans to open a new mini-golf concept at a defunct mall site in Overland Park.

Ryan Patton, managing director of EVP Capital Advisors, and Michael Sullivan, co-founder and executive managing director of MMG Real Estate Advisors, teamed up to develop an entertainment complex called Tap Ins.

The $13 million project is south of Lowe’s and Barkley Street on the former Metcalf South Shopping Center site near the intersection of 95th Street and Metcalf Avenue. A LongHorn Steakhouse and a Chick-fil-A are to the west, and Novel Place Senior Living is to the east. Indiana-based Thompson Thrift plans to build more than 300 apartments in a pair of four-story buildings on the undeveloped property to the south.

An 18-hole, 25,000-square-foot outdoor mini-golf course will fill the west half of the site. A 6,500-square-foot standalone restaurant is planned at the northwest corner.

Outdoor video walls will be placed on the north and east boundary of the golf course, and a paved area with a camper bar is proposed on the western edge of the mini-golf course. Six outdoor cabanas, totaling about 2,800 square feet, are proposed south of the outdoor course.

Sullivan said that although he and Patton are avid golfers, they wanted to create a an entertainment concept accessible to guests of all ages and skill levels.

“Even a Top Golf-type concept, there is a requisite skill level to succeed at the concept, and mini golf doesn’t really have that,” Sullivan said.

A second, 18-hole indoor course will be developed in a fully retractable glass greenhouse on the eastern half. In addition to the mini-golf course, the temperature-controlled greenhouse also will house an ice cream shop, two bars and a beer garden, as well as indoor and outdoor seating areas for events. Roughly 4,600 square feet north of the greenhouse building is earmarked for outdoor yard games.

The roughly 30,000-square-foot greenhouse will be equipped with fully retractable sunshades on the sides to control the temperature. In the winter months, the sunshades will extend over the golf course to retain heat, and in the summer the roof will retract to release additional heat.

“It will hold a very comfortable temperature even through the winter, down to about zero degrees Fahrenheit as long as there is sun that it can trap,” Patton said. “We don’t cool it. It’s just cooled by sunshade and fans. From an energy consumption standpoint, it’s pretty wildly efficient.”

Roughly 120 TVs will be installed throughout the project for guests to watch while they’re on the golf course, sitting in the beer garden or grabbing a bite to eat.

“If you took an aerial view of this site without anything to scale around it, they will look like actual golf courses, as opposed to traditional putt-putt,” Patton said. “There’s no obstacles. It’s all turf and landscaping.”

Although the indoor and outdoor courses are expected to have an equal difficulty level, they will have different designs. The outdoor course will be landscaped with evergreens and other traditional landscaping, and the indoor course will have a Vegas desert theme, Patton said.

Instead of timed tickets, Tap Ins will operate on a day-pass model.

“You buy a day pass, whether it's for a child or an adult, and you get access to the entire concept for the entirety of the day, unlike a lot of the competing eatertainment concepts where you might go in and get a two-hour window or a single round of golf,” Sullivan said.

The courses will operate from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and 9 a. m. to midnight weekends. Sullivan estimated that Tap Ins day passes will cost about $20 for a child and $30 for an adult.

The Overland Park Planning Commission is scheduled to review final development plans for Tap Ins on Oct. 14. The development team hopes to begin construction within the next 30 to 60 days, with a tentative opening by midsummer 2025.

The development team includes WSKF Architects as the architect, Olsson as the civil engineer and AIM Construction as the general contractor. The developers will work with Overland Park-based PB&J Restaurants Inc. to find tenants for the restaurant and bar spaces.

Cboe Global Markets is building a new office on the ground floor of the Overland Park Xchange building.

Chicago-based Cboe (CBOE: CBOE) is at 8050 Marshall Drive in Lenexa. The leased office grew from about 150 employees when Cboe acquired BATS Global Markets for about $3.4 billion in 2017 to about 300 today. BATS moved into the building in 2008.

Cboe, formerly known as the Chicago Board Options Exchange, plans to complete the move to 6800 W. 115th St. in Overland Park sometime in next summer. The new office will be roughly the same size at 60,000 square feet. The building was constructed in 1986 and renovated in 2017 to attract a high-tech operations. It has nearby restaurants and retail, is well-lit and allows Cboe to create a flexible office space with the ability to create assigned seating areas and unassigned seating areas that allow teams to move around.

The metro office serves as a key technology and operations center for Cboe's global operations. It also houses functions such as finance, regulation and compliance.

The Lenexa location has been “a good space for us,” said Chris Isaacson, Cboe's COO and its top local executive.

“But it’s time for us to upgrade to a much more modern space that better reflects the future aspirations of the firm,” he said. “It’s going to be a super modern, world-class space. We have similar great spaces in London, New York, Sydney and Japan, so this is really bringing Kansas City — the second largest office Cboe has around the world — up to that standard.”

Isaacson said Cboe made the commitment to Kansas City because it continues to see it as a great place to recruit and retain talent that drives innovation for Cboe around the world.

“We wouldn’t be able to do this unless Cboe was thriving globally,” he said. “Our business is very good. You can see the financial results we release every quarter. Our derivatives and data access solutions businesses are growing extremely well, so we have the capacity to invest in our people and space like this.”

Cboe is an electronic derivatives and exchange network, offering trading, clearing and investment solutions to clients around the world. It offers U.S., Canadian, European, Australian and Japanese equities trading. It also offers U.S. options trading, U.S. futures trading, a foreign exchange, European derivatives and indices.

People of the Kingdom: This story is part of The Star’s ongoing series highlighting what makes Kansas City Chiefs fans a special part of the team’s success and history. Looking for more? Sign up for our free Chiefs newsletter.

When you step into Crindy and Tom Brown’s Overland Park house, you step straight into Chiefs Kingdom. With a room bathed in red light and filled with Kansas City Chiefs memorabilia, it’s clear—these two are dedicated fans.

“I watched the Chiefs games with my dad when I was younger,” said Crindy, now joined by her husband in a shared passion for the team. “My husband and I are big Chiefs fans, we’re big sports fans.”

It all started after their kids moved out. With the extra space, they decided to create a Chiefs-themed room, decking it out with items that honor their favorite team. The couple has been adding on to it for seven to ten years, and now it’s bleeding out into their dining room Crindy explained while standing in the red glow that lights the room.

The Browns love hosting watch parties, gathering friends to cheer on the Chiefs, share food, and talk football. They even have wood-burned portraits of their beloved dogs, each with a Chiefs motif, as part of their growing collection.

A signed Travis Kelce helmet—a special birthday gift—is among the treasures in their cherished collection. The centerpiece, though, might be the two commemorative ceramic Super Bowl footballs and the helmet signed by Patrick Mahomes himself. “It’s from his rookie year, before he even played a game,” Crindy said. “Those three things I would never sell. I would sell my husband over them.”

Their front yard is as spirited as the inside, filled with large Chiefs cutouts and logos, and during the holidays, their tree is adorned with Chiefs-themed ornaments. “I’ve been collecting ornaments for a while,” Crindy explained. “Every ornament here is pretty much Chiefs.”

Despite running out of space, Crindy is all in on the fandom. “Love the Chiefs and the Kingdom,” she said with a smile. “It’s a great place to be.”

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This story was originally published November 3, 2024, 6:00 AM.

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