Published May 2004

Flying high at Frontier
At county’s only residential air park,
aviation aficionados take to skies for work, play

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT At Frontier Air Park, a residential fly-in community north of Lake Stevens, Dean Eldridge’s Beechcraft Debonair shares space in the family hangar with his restored classic cars.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Snohomish County’s Frontier Air Park north of Lake Stevens offers an enviable lifestyle for flying enthusiasts: a private, gated community where residents can bring their planes home with them.

It’s the only “air park” in the county and likely the only one that will ever be built here, its Windermere marketers believe, because of today’s zoning and flying restrictions.

For the fliers who live there, the 20-year-old development can be idyllic.

One of its first residents was Dean Eldridge, who built there 14 years ago. Until a few years ago, he ignored Seattle’s heavy traffic congestion by flying his 1961 Beechcraft Debonair over clogged freeways to his Boeing Field business, a short 20-minute trip each way.

Each morning, he opened his hangar — instead of garage — door, taxied his plane to the air park’s 2,600-foot runway and soared off to Lindean Aircraft Upholstery, the business he and his wife, Linda, co-owned.

“I saw some beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and great mountain scenery, instead of all the traffic,” he said, smiling.

Now that the business has been sold, Eldridge has turned to new hobbies. His plane shares hangar space with more than a half dozen classic autos he has restored to mint condition. But his Beechcraft isn’t retired. Now on its third engine, it still takes Eldridge wherever he wants to fly.

When he’s on the ground at home, he and his wife enjoy a hilltop life with views of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains and a quiet lifestyle that seems contrary to the usual image of living by an airfield.

Because the residents own the runway — and there are no aviation businesses, no control tower and no steady air traffic — the stillness is broken only occasionally by departing or arriving planes.

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT From the air, Frontier Air Park’s name clearly identifies the residential development’s runway, a welcome sight for homeowners returning from a commute to work or a breakfast at some nearby airfield.

Since most of the community’s residents are plane lovers, plane owners or both, even the occasional noise isn’t an annoyance. For people whose lives embrace airplanes and flying, an air park is a natural place to be, as comfortable and convenient as golf-course communities for avid golfers.

“This is one of the best air parks, with one of the best runways, of any air park in Washington state,” Eldridge said. “And this state has a lot of them.”

Indeed, it does. According to information compiled by the Washington state Department of Transportation’s Aviation Department, Airport Homes’ Web site and other sources, Washington state has 50 residential air parks, compared to 23 in Oregon, 8 in Alaska, 11 in Montana, 6 in Idaho, 38 in Texas and 28 in California. Only Florida, with 52, ranks higher than Washington in fly-in communities.

Air parks in Washington include:

• Swanson Field in Eatonville, southeast of Seattle, where there are nine flying families who share a 3,000-foot-long runway.
• Crest Airpark in Kent, with a paved 3,400-foot-long runway.
• Diamond Point, Sequim, with a 2,335-foot-long paved strip.
• And Parkside Airpark at Battleground, with a 2,000-foot grass runway.

The idea of residential fly-in communities began in California 60 years ago when an “air ranch” opened its runway at Carmel. Nationally, researchers have turned up 426 residential air-park developments, most with sod or grass runways but many with concrete or asphalt strips. Today’s largest air park is 1,500-lot Spruce Creek in Florida.

Frontier Air Park in Lake Stevens is one of the larger fly-in communities in the country, with 115 five-acre tracts established on 600 acres that include wetlands and mountain views. The gated community boasts a 50-foot-wide, 2,600-foot-long runway with a 1,000-foot paved overrun on the north end, plus underground utilities that allow for clear takeoffs and approaches.

“That’s a nice thing about air-park runways,” Eldridge said. “At first they look strange, then you realize it’s because there are no power lines at either end of the runway, as so many airports seem to have.”

Frontier’s 480-foot-elevation runway has a wide-open setting with no trees, its own lighting and beacon, a windsock and papis, battery-powered lights that provide a visual glide slope for approaching pilots. Fliers also find guidance from a radio beacon at Arlington Airport a few miles north of Frontier Air Park.

“It’s a bit of a steep slope dropping in, around 7 degrees instead of 3 or 4, but that’s not really a problem. As for the weather, in 14 years of flying to work, weather has blocked me from returning only three times,” Eldridge said.

Occasionally there are deer on the runway, but so far they’ve created no major problems for the community’s generally sparse flying activity.

To visitors, Frontier Air Park looks at first like simply a generous scattering of homes where owners want some elbow room. But only a short distance inside the security gate an airplane in front of a house quickly identifies Frontier as an aviation community.

Taxiways connect home hangars to the north-south runway; road signs warn motorists to watch for taxiing aircraft; a red, antique aviation fuel pump decorates a hangar; and a plane’s former landing gear supports a mailbox. It’s as common to see people working on their planes in their driveways and hangars as it is to see more traditional homeowners working on their cars.

Home hangars, in fact, solve another problem for plane owners, since hangar space at Paine Field, Arlington Airport, Snohomish and other fields in the Northwest is in short supply, and rental rates continue to climb.

Not everyone at Frontier flies. Many just enjoy the scenery and seclusion. Out of the 115 five-acre parcels, only 85 properties include “air rights” that allow owners to use the runway. About a dozen parcels are still for sale, priced in the $120,000 to $145,000 range, plus another $30,000 to $40,000 for air rights. Homes on the sites range from $350,000 to $1 million each.

“Of those 85 properties with air rights, only about a third of them have planes. Another third of the owners plan to get a plane, and the remaining third probably never will have planes but they bought rights just to have the option,” said Gary Weitenhagen, an agent in Windermere’s Marysville office who handles the community’s property sales, along with Windermere’s Larry Johnson.

“Most of the pilots are fair-weather fliers, a few commute to work. Some have worked for Boeing or flown for airlines, others have always been in general aviation,” he said.

A homeowners association sets standards for the community, enforces its protective covenants and maintains its aviation facilities. Brad Adams is president of the association; Greg Ortega is vice president; Lynn Jefferson is secretary; and Mike Hebaus is the group’s financial officer.

“What’s unusual about Frontier Air Park is that there likely will never be another air park in Snohomish County,” Weitenhagen said. “It would be too difficult. There’s not the land for it, and there would be too much objection to aviation and planes.”

Even when the air park venture was conceived in the early 1980s it was difficult to get permitting because of the extensive wetlands on the site, the topography and the aviation element of the housing development.

After the struggling air park went through changes in ownership, lawsuits with neighbors, a foreclosure and bankruptcy, it ended up in the hands of today’s owners, Frontier Airpark Investors LLC, with longtime real estate community leaders Hank Robinett and Rich Boyden as the general partners.

Weitenhagen and Johnson, who worked for Robinett at the time, began marketing the air park while the new investors completed work on the runway, roads and utilities that had never been finished by the prior owners.

“We feel good to think that we restored the confidence of earlier owners and made it right for them as we completed the development of the air park,” Robinett said. “Those who are here now and those in the future will see the value of their property and air rights increase just like waterfront or view property. Now, after being disrupted by September 11th, general aviation is coming back. There’s a bright future for this air park concept.”

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