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Gather round friends, for today we are going to explore another special kind of subdivision in and around Phoenix. That's right, today we're going to dive way too deep into homes built around airstrips. For airplanes. (Yes, this is a real thing.)
First, you might be asking if this is a common thing. More than you'd probably think! Building a primitive or simple runway is not terribly difficult, so it's not actually all that surprising that you can find these scattered around the country.
Phoenix is a particularly good place to fly, with lots clear weather, so it's even less surprising to find these here. Interestingly, these developments exist across a wide spectrum of available facilities, runway quality, and quite frankly, professionalism.
So with the table set, let's take a look at the airstrips and the homes that surround them throughout metro Phoenix. There's quite a bit to get to, so this is going to be a fairly long thread.
First up is Hanger Haciendas (bonus points for a catchy name). As you can see, it's fairly primitive. Located in South Phoenix, the runway is only slightly wider than a residential street. The homes themselves are large and as you'd expect, most have detached hangers for aircraft
Hanger Haciendas is a private airfield and has some particularly, uh, interesting notes for Runway 26: "40 ft Power Line 532 ft from runway." That's right, you have to clear a power line before touching down from the east.
There aren't a lot of recent sales at Hanger Haciendas, but a 3/2 at about 2k sf sold for $565k in March 2020. The development was a product of the late '80's early '90's. Take a look at the plat map below.
Finally, here you can see a section of the chart showing it in context. As you can see, it's pretty close to South Mountain. I imagine that, unless you know where you're going, picking out the runway among other residential streets might be somewhat difficult.
So you might be thinking that landing at a runway essentially the width of a residential street would be a challenge. But what if I told you that there are versions of this where the runway isn't just the width of a residential street, it literally is the residential street!
Let me introduce you to Thunder Ridge Airpark and Castle Well Airport, both in Morristown, AZ, NW of Phoenix. The runway at Thunder Ridge (pictured below) is also 237th Ave and the runway at Castle Well is 251st Ave. They are about 3 miles apart, as the crow flies.
As you can see, at both Thunder Ridge and Castle Well (pictured), the primary access to the residential homes is via the runway/road. I imagine that, given the width of the runway, some hairy situations could arise. "Bob, I'm trying to take off, don't back out!"
About the houses. As you'd expect, both have fairly large homes with hangers. Land can be had for about $100k, while a sale from 2019 had a 4/4 selling for about $460k. These are both from the late 80's & early 90's as well.
These are pretty far from stuff - for example, the nearest grocery stores are in Wickenburg. So from Thunder Ridge, it would take about 1/2 hour to get to the Safeway by Wickenburg's airport, which I'd wager, could probably be done faster by plane. Fly in fly out groceries!
Alright, let's move on to some beefier airports with housing. The first, up in Carefree, is Skyranch at Carefree Airport (again, bonus points for a great name). This one really looks like an airport, more than the others we've looked at so far.
Skyranch is older than the others we've looked at, dating back to the 50's, with direct runway access homes dating to the 60's. As you can see, it focuses more on the airport than the housing, over 100 aircraft based there.
Interestingly, these homes can only be accessed by the appropriately named Autoplane Dr., which doubles as the taxiway from the homes to the runway itself. I can't think of a more exciting way to drive home then along the taxiway at an airport. Unless it's the runway, I guess.
Anyway, these homes are not cheap. Recent sales of the single family homes off Autoplane Dr. have all been for $1 million+, which makes sense for this kind of home in a wealthy Phoenix exurb. If you're interested, you can see the chart below as well.
Next up, we'll explore the quite airport-y Stellar Airpark in Chandler, AZ. I drive by this every day on my way to work (shoutout Downtown Chandler, if you live in the Valley come on by!), so I'm a little more familiar with it.
Stellar Airpark is located in easily the most built up area of any of the ones we'll see in this thread. You can see offices, regular subdivisions, the 202, etc. all around it. The freeway is a challenge in particular, as the light poles could become obstacles at takeoff/landing.
To address this challenge, some pretty clever modifications were made to the lights at the South end of the runway along the 202. In the image below, you can see they've been lowered and have red beacons on top. It's a neat detail that helps pilots.
I can also verify that they're still building at Stellar Airpark. The homes themselves have come in waves, some early '70's, some early '00's, and now some more today. The airpark itself was established in 1969. Interestingly, it's also open to the public.
So what do homes here cost? Well, as you might expect with such a wide range of construction periods, it depends. Recent sales range from $400k to $2+ million. Listings today are pushing $3 million. The difference here from others is that buyers have lots of amenities nearby.
Additionally, there are commercial uses adjacent to Stellar, unlike the others which are purely residential or residential/recreational. This is, functionally, an airport. It just happens to also have taxi-up housing. You can see the chart below.
The final one we'll look at is Pegasus Airpark (aside: we should let the folks naming airports in Phoenix name more things! Sky Harbor, Skyranch, Pegasus, Thunder Ridge are all great). This one is down in Queen Creek, in the far Southeast Valley.
Pegasus brands itself as "Arizona's premier fly-in community" and I guess, who am I to argue with that? Activated in 1998, this one is more recent than the others we've seen. But, as you can tell, it's still developing more than 2 decades on.
Queen Creek is growing fast, and there are more and more amenities down there all the time. But back in the early '00's, this would have been way out there. What does this mean for cost? Lots w/ runway access sell for ~$250k, lots w/o ~$150k. Homes are ~$900k to $1+ million.
Unlike Stellar, Pegasus is private. It's interesting that not all lots have direct runway access and even some that could do not. This is fairly unusual for developments like these - I'm not sure I'd want to live on a runway if I didn't fly. You can see the chart below.
Now, there are A LOT of these - many more all over AZ and the country. These are ones that I find interesting and demonstrate the variety of builds. Many of these have their own website with more information, which I used for research, in additional to the following resources.
Airpark Map dot com has developments like these mapped out all over the country. You can take a look here if you're interested: https://www.airparkmap.com/home/arizona-airparks
I used Sky Vector for all of the charts ( https://skyvector.com/?ll=33.208725,-111.617240278&chart=121&zoom=3), Zillow for home prices, and the Maricopa County Assessors Site for plat maps.
Finally, if you're interested in this, you might be interested in my thread on Waterski Lake housing developments, which can be found here. https://twitter.com/downtownjco/status/1348840811761344513?s=21
