At home on the airport
Once upon a time, local airports were like small-town general stores. They were cozy, friendly places where pilots and business owners all knew each other and would gather both to fly and talk, sharing knowledge, stories, and companionship. Today, this kind of airstrip is harder to find. In order to survive, many airports have had to focus intensively on upgrading facilities, increasing security and top-end services, and attracting new business. The friendly general store has evolved into a serious business.
While these changes have their advantages, they still cause a twinge of regret in the hearts of pilots who miss the personality and community of the small-time airports. For some of these pilots, the solution may be to move their airplane — and their living quarters — to a residential airpark. There are currently more than 320 residential airports across the United States, according to the Living With Your Plane Association. They vary widely in price, personality, and physical facilities, but they all offer pilots a social community atmosphere and a level of convenience few conventional airports can match.
Cameron Park, for example, is a well-established residential airpark about 20 miles east of Sacramento, California. Begun in 1966, it now encompasses approximately 85 homes and 150 aircraft. Because the airpark has developed slowly over its 25-year history, it has a mix of house styles and sizes, each built on half-acre lots. Since Cameron Park is situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range, it is generally above the fog that covers the Sacramento basin for long periods during the winter, but below the mountain snow line. Of course, its location also means that its 4,000-foot-long runway is not exactly level and has a significant hill at one end that can make both departures and final approaches in that area interesting, to say the least.
Cameron Park is also a little unusual in that it is a publicly owned, public-use airport as well as a residential community. This structure has both advantages and disadvantages, according to its residents. Its status as a public-use airport makes it eligible for federal funds to make runway and other improvements. It also supports businesses that provide many services, including fuel, flight instruction, and maintenance that probably would not be available at a private-use airpark. But being a public-use airport also means more air traffic, and the residents do not have as much control over the operation of the airstrip as they would if the airport were privately owned.
Yet in most other respects, Cameron Park is a typical fly-in community. The houses, most of which have attached or semi-attached hangar/garages, are built on streets that double as taxiways and are wide enough for two airplanes to pass. A mix of airplanes is based there, but the majority are single-engine Cessnas, Pipers, and Mooneys.
At first, the juxtaposition of airplanes and houses is a little disconcerting. Few airport hangars are designed in a French Provincial or Cape Cod style with dormer windows on the second story. And a Cessna 182 parked contentedly in a driveway next to the family station wagon looks a little like a dream where the pieces don't quite all fit together. LaRoy Tymes, who moved to Cameron Park two years ago, still remembers the first time he taxied his Cessna Cutlass down a street there. "I came to a stop sign and stopped," he remembers, "and I thought, I don't have a turn signal. What am I supposed to do now?" Yet after a while, residents find that taxiing by front-yard shrubbery begins to feel normal.
The people who live in Cameron Park have a wide variety of backgrounds and professions. There are airline pilots, entrepreneurs, retirees, and people who work in the local area. Many moved from the San Franciso Bay area, and some rely on their airplanes to commute back there on a regular basis. Cameron Park, they say, offered them the opportunity to get out of a congested big city environment and spend more time around their airplanes.
"Actually, I think there are probably very few pilots who wouldn't want to live on an airport," says Bill George, a retired IBM executive who has lived in the community five years. George used to live in downtown San Francisco and kept his Mooney 201 at the San Carlos Airport. But living and flying in a large city was aggravating, he says. It took so much time to get through traffic to the airport, get his airplane ready, take off, and get out of the San Francisco airspace that it was often faster to drive places than to fly, even if the drive was a couple of hours. Not only that, he adds, but "someone had to die before you could get a hangar there."
So for the price of his two-bedroom condominium in town, George bought a lot at Cameron Park, built a large house and matching hangar, and "still had some money left over." His Mooney 201 is now a full 10 steps from his kitchen — which, he says, encourages him to do a lot more recreational flying. "It also means I never get to the airplane and realize I've left my charts at home," he says.
Jon Crowley is an airline pilot whose base was moved to San Francisco 11 years ago. He looked in the Bay area for homes and found the cost of living so exorbitant that for the same price as a house on no land there, he could buy not only a half-acre lot with a house and hangar at Cameron Park, but an airplane as well.
Of course, this is not to say that houses in Cameron Park are inexpensive. Half-acre lots in the community reportedly sell for $100,000 to $125,000, and prices for sites with a completed house and hangar vary between $250,000 and $500,000. Nevertheless, Cameron Park still offers a lot more bang for the buck than the San Francisco Bay area, where even the small condominiums and townhomes often sell for $200,000 or more.
Cameron Park also offers its residents a neighborhood atmosphere that is somewhat rare in California. "I lived in the same neighborhood in L.A. for 13 years, and I didn't know as many people there as I know here," George notes. Crowley noticed the same thing about the airports where he used to base his plane. "When I was at Gillespie and Montgomery (airports in San Diego), I didn't know any of the pilots," he says. "Here, I know everybody."
The pilots at Cameron Park not only know each other, they also socialize with each other a lot. LaRoy and Sharon Tymes find that in the course of a single evening walk, they will end up having three "mini- parties" with neighbors they encounter along the way. "It's a close-knit community," Sharon explains, "because even if you have nothing else in common with your neighbors, you have a common interest in airplanes."
The airpark has a social association called the Friends of Cameron Airpark that organizes neighborhood watch and clean-up projects, fly-outs, Christmas parties, and the occasional pig roast. But pilots there also organize a lot of small, informal social flying activities, like Mooney fly-outs or dinner trips. "We have a couple of guys who are instigators, and that's what you need to make things happen," George says. "And it's kind of nice to live in a place where people understand why you might want to fly to Auburn just for breakfast."
The airpark has such an enticing atmosphere, in fact, that Les and Delores Krossa decided to buy a house there, even though neither of them is a pilot or has any plans to learn to fly. "I think we've had more fun here than anywhere else we've lived," Delores explains. "These people are interesting and talented, and they like to have fun." She pauses and smiles before adding, "Of course, they are pretty opinionated."
This opinionated nature that seems to be prevalent among pilots does lead to some heated debates among residents about how the airpark should be managed. But most of the residents say that the dissension among their neighborhood organization is no worse than in any other homeowners' association.
If there is a downside to living in the airpark, residents say it is that property there can be difficult to finance or sell. There are only a limited number of people who will want to buy a house in a fly-in community, and banks do not recognize hangars, even attached hangars, as finished square footage. So although an owner may expect to get a better price for his house because it comes with a beautiful hangar/garage, it is difficult to get a bank to include that value in the mortgage amount it is willing to finance.
Sharon Tymes also notes that the community is pretty homogeneous, with little in the way of ethnic or racial diversity. And although Cameron Park is only a 20-minute drive from the eastern side of Sacramento, airparks tend to be located farther from downtown areas than ordinary suburban neighborhoods.
But to the residents of Cameron Park, the advantages of living near their airplanes, in a social community filled with people who share their love of flying, far outweigh any of the drawbacks. "This place is more open, in terms of knowing neighbors and sharing experiences, than anywhere I've ever lived," Tymes says.
So pilots who miss the "old time" community airports can take heart. The general store may be a little farther outside of town than it used to be, but it is still alive and well.
Lane E. Wallace, AOPA 896621, is an aviation writer and private pilot who has been flying for more than seven years. She owns a 1946 Cessna 120 and is restoring a 1943 Stearman.
Finding a Fly-In Home
Association offers assistance
If living in a residential airpark sounds like an appealing idea, you have lots of options. According to the Living With Your Plane Association (LWYPA), there are fly-in communities in at least 39 states. Some are small grass strips with only a few modest houses on them, while others have long, paved runways, approach aids, fuel and maintenance services, and houses that tend to be much larger and more expensive.
A number of fly-in communities are known for attracting a particular type or aircraft or flying activity, as well. A homebuilt or warbird, for example, will probably receive a warmer welcome at the Leeward Air Ranch in Florida, which is known as a sport aviation community, than at the development in Spruce Creek, Florida, where the owners tend more toward Beechcraft Barons or Aerospatiale TBM 700s.
The LWYPA publishes an annual directory of residential airparks, which gives basic information on the airport and residential facilities in each community, as well as a contact name and number, where available. The directory also includes a checklist of items to investigate when looking at a fly-in community, such as how long the project has been around, who owns and operates the runways and taxiways, and what kinds of deeds, covenants, easements, and association requirements affect homeowners there.
For more information on selecting a residential airpark, contact the Living With Your Plane Association, c/o General Aviation News & Flyer, Post Office Box 39099, Tacoma, Washington 98439; telephone: 206/471-9888; fax: 206/471-9911. — LEW
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