A growing Overland Park development out south will soon gain a new component: a hotel.
The Overland Park Planning Commission recently approved plans for a new Holiday Inn Express & Suites at the Bluhawk development.
Bart Lowen, Vice President of Development for Price Brothers (Bluhawk’s Kansas City-based developer), said construction on the hotel will likely kick off this spring.
The hotel is coming to 159th Street and U.S. Highway 69
- Plans call for a roughly 58,500-square-foot hotel with four stories and 99 guest rooms.
- The hotel will be built off Shawnee Drive, near the AdventHealth Sports Park amateur sports arena which opened late last year and south of Bluhawk’s existing retail.
- Pending city approvals, construction will break ground in April, with hopes to open the hotel by 2026, Lowen estimated.
Bluhawk will eventually have multiple hotels
Lowen said the plan is to eventually have three hotels at Bluhawk at which guests and visitors to the sports arena will be able to stay.
Further details for the other two hotels have yet to be be announced.
Lowen said the idea of adding a hotel to the growing development came, in part, from the new AdventHealth Sports Park and the convenience it would bring to athletes and families from out of town.
“The last thing you want to do as a traveling parent or traveling family is go to a place to play the activity that you’re playing, and have to get in your car and drive all over the place to find something to eat and find a place to stay,” he said. “It just creates a convenience to the entire family that’s really enjoyable.”
More changes are coming to Bluhawk
In terms of retail, two new tenants — bookseller Barnes & Noble and clothing retailer J. Crew Factory — will open at Bluhawk in late summer.
Even more retail is on the way to Bluhawk after that, with the development’s second retail phase, dubbed The Boundary, expected to bring roughly 200,000 square feet of new retail by 2026.
While many new tenants have yet to be finalized, Lowen said he anticipates both local and national market businesses to come online as part of that next phase.
“A project this size is going to bring in some tenants that are outside the market — local, regional and national tenants,” he said.
Further growth is also moving forward for the AdventHealth Sports Park, which opened to the public last fall.
Plans for the multi-sport facility’s next phase of development call for an 18-hole miniature golf course, 12 new pickleball courts (four outdoors, eight indoors), and yard games like bocce and shuffleboard, and a new bar and restaurant.
If all goes according to plan, Lowen said the goal is to have the newest features of the sports park built out by 2026 as well.
“The community really loves it — obviously the locals here, but also those that are traveling, this is exactly what they want,” he said. “When you look at Bluhawk, it’s just a really good case study for an appropriate way to deliver a sport-plus-retail offering.”
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