Imagine walking through a residential area and finding yourself airplanes parked in front of houses or garages that are as big as a hangar. It seems very crazy, but this type of neighborhood exists.
In these districts, aviation is a way of life and its streets are adapted so that airplanes can circulate on the asphalt. A paradise for airplane enthusiasts, with great bank accounts, where many use their winged mounts as cars for their daily trips.
With private take-off runways and even a control tower
Cameron Airpark Estates y Spruce Creek They are two of the best known, both in the US. In these neighborhoods Planes are like cars and motorcycles: a more convenient means of transportation.. So much so that quite a few residents go to work taking to the skies. In reality, there are more than 600 aerial residential neighborhoods on the entire planet, but these two are considered among the most beautiful and striking. Especially Cameron Airpark.
It is about a suburb looking for in Sacramento (California)next to Cameron Park Airport. Hence its name. It was born in 1963 and consists of a total of 124 homes. For its part, Spruce Creek is located in Florida, it was founded a decade later, in 1974, and it extends 486 hectares: there reside about 5,000 people.
In both small planes, classic airplanes, jets or even experimental prototypes share space with cars and other vehicles, either inside huge garages or in front of single-family homes with large gardens. Or opulent mansions on Spruce Creek.
@uretskyaviation Would you live in an Airpark?
Huge streets and tiny traffic signs. In these two districts, the streets have been adapted to allow the passage of airplanes: they are roads that are wider than usual and, for example, the traffic signs are lower, to prevent them from being blown over by the wing of an aircraft. Also the mailboxes of the houses.
At least that’s how it is in Cameron Airpark, where it is also the residents who pay for the maintenance of its wide streets by paying a special tax and which is being renewed. This community has a more special aura than Spruce Creek.
Its streets have direct access to a private runway at the adjacent airportso that planes take off and land there. By the way, this runway, 800 meters long and 20 meters wide, is narrower than the streets of this curious neighborhood, since they are designed for planes to pass in two directions and not just one.
Spruce Creek also has a 1,220 m long private piste. But since there is no nearby airport as such, they have a control tower to manage traffic. There is also a helipad. In total, about 25,000 flights per year are recorded in this other, more ostentatious residential area.
They also have special noise pollution regulationsto avoid affecting the rest of the residents. In the end we are talking about planes that land and take off next to houses, so they cannot do so at any time.
Cameron Airpark Estates, bird’s eye view. Source: Cameronparkairport. com
Who lives in these neighborhoods with airplanes per car? For the most part, the residents of these neighborhoods are people related to aviation or aeronautics, whether active or retired: pilots, engineers, astronauts… But also well-known actors who have a license to fly: John Travolta, Tom Cruise o Harrison Ford They have, or have had, home ownership in Spruce Creek.
Travolta’s case is curious: he moved from Spruce Creek due to continuous complaints from his neighbors. And one of its planes is nothing less than a 1964 Boeing 707: a commercial plane more than 40 m long and weighing 113 tons. It is not exactly silent and like the rest it took off and landed on the private, but community, runway of this district. Now His new home, also in Florida, has its own airport.
Returning to the neighborhood in general, There are those who use airplanes as if they were a car.. For example, Burl Skaggs, an aviation mechanical engineer who resides at Cameron Airpark. He is now retired, but for seven years he commuted from there to Palo Alto, where he worked. This journey It takes almost three hours by carbut by plane between 30 and 40 minutes. “I don’t commute to work anymore, but I still have a plane to play with,” comenta a Business Insider.
And in addition to shorter journeys, another advantage of traveling on your own plane from there is that you avoid one of the most tedious aspects of airports: going through control. “Here you open the garage door, turn on the plane, go down to the runway and take off”points out another resident who also used it as a car for his daily trips.
Anyway, it’s not just airplane enthusiasts who live there: because the houses are equipped with hangar-sized garages, they also car collectors reside in these districts. Although there are those who combine both passions. serves as an example This neighbor from Cameron AirparkIn addition to two airplanes, it has four-wheeled classics such as a Porsche 356, a convertible Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and a classic Ford Mustang, among others.
Houses that are neither cheap nor easy to get even if you can afford them. Considering the residents, living in these exclusive and peculiar neighborhoods is not cheap. Although there are some that start at $200,000, most exceed that price at around a million dollars or they far surpass it in Spruce Creek, where there are real mansions.
But on the other hand, and even if you have the money to pay for a house with a hangar, it is difficult to move there. Especially at Cameron Airpark, which is smaller. “You basically have to wait for someone to die,” says Daniel Kurywchak, president of Friends of Cameron Park Airport.
The same thing flew, and never better said, when one of these houses with an immense garage was put up for sale several years ago: he formalized the offer that same day.
Source: www.motorpasion.com
