Distpatch Tribune 4/05
Raytown Tribune 4/05

Main Attraction
Record crowd makes friends during home makeover

At first, the thousands gathered on 79th Street seemed only to want to see Ty Pennington.

Women begged him to come out and visit. Children shrieked his name. A grandmother offered him a pizza-sized cookie.

Pennington is the overwhelming favorite among the group of reality-TV stars featured on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

An energetic, spiked-haired actor/carpenter/designer, Pennington isn’t the average 38-year-old. Or, so the crowd of fans seemed to believe.

But as work progressed on the house of local firefighter and hero Stephen Johnson, 8211 E. 79th St., the audience found new things to talk about. Two couples discovered they had relatives in common. Men plotted what they’d do to a house like Johnson’s. Women made friends.

“It becomes kind of a family thing here after you stand her with people for so many hours,” said Nancy Ebeling of Raytown.

Ebeling met Renae Oldenburg and Mark Sievertsen, who live around the corner from Johnson, on Thursday, March 31.

They stood together again on Friday, April 1. Oldenburg and Sievertsen said Ebeling could use their bathroom any time.

On Saturday night, Ebeling met Lisa Nichols of Kansas City. The pair stood at the back of the record-size audience and chatted.

“That’s been the most interesting part about this whole thing,” said Nichols.

Nichols also said she enjoyed eavesdropping.

At one point, Nichols said she heard some say Johnson’s neighbors had been paid $120,000 to allow the massive interruption. Others said they had been paid $5,000.

Show producers said neighbors would be given gifts and sometimes receive small makeovers, like bathroom renovations.

“The rumor mill gets really funny to listen to because the story changes as it goes down,” Sievertsen said.

The crowd was the show’s largest ever, according to show producers. Some gatekeepers estimated 20,000 people filed through the street each day during the weekend.

The audience trampled the early spring grass to dirt across the street from Johnson’s home. Producers promised neighbors the grass would be replaced and would look better than ever, neighbor Sean Crump said.

Crump said he didn’t mind the damage to his lawn.

Michael Moloney, and designer and co-star on the show said the Kansas City crowd had been ”great.”

“Normally, we don’t have the capacity to allow this many people in,” Moloney said. “Certain neighborhoods just don’t allow for it. It’s been amazing to house this many locals.”