Up in the air

By Don Bradley

Cass County took a step closer to approving a residential development where millionaires can park airplanes in their houses.

The planning board’s action came as the clock pushed midnight at a fiery meeting packed with locals who don’t think much of the idea.

There was yelling.

If Arrowhead Airpark, on a 160-acre tract south of Belton in rural Cass County, is built, it would be the first like it in the Kansas City area.

The plan calls for 93 homes, each with a private hangar, some like a big attached garage. And anytime an owner wants they can taxi their plane on a private paved street from their house to the development’s 3,000-foot runway and take off into the wild blue yonder over serene farmsteads and grazing horses.

Therein lies the basis for the recent 5-hour meeting at the Cass County Sheriff’s office in Harrisonville.

The airpark folks and the locals went at it.

The Arrowhead team, led by president Craig Wilcox, pushed a beautiful subdivision that would generate millions of tax dollars for the county and be a great neighbor for the existing farming community.

The opponents pushed back that the neighborhood is already beautiful, partly because there’s not a lot of airplanes flying around.

It’s farm and horse country. And quiet. That’s why they moved there, and they want it to stay that way.

As for being neighborly, one man said a plane piloted by Wilcox repeatedly buzzed his place at tree-top level.

Wilcox acknowledged it was him, but said he was shooting a promotional video.

Robert Hardin, chair of the Cass County Planning Board, kept things in check for the most part until a woman stepped to the front and started to play a recording of plane noise.

Hardin told her the board had already heard enough about plane noise.

She insisted. He told her to stop. She played on.

“You’re done!” he yelled.

She stormed away as Hardin asked a fellow board member if he should suspend the meeting.

“Unbelievable,” the woman said.

Later, another woman approached the speaker’s area with another recording. Hardin started to object but it turned out to be bird noises. That was ok, he said. The board hadn’t heard any bird noises.

At the end, the four-member board voted 3-1 to recommend approval of a preliminary plat for the Arrowhead project and split 2-2 on a special use permit for the runway.

Both issues now go to the board of zoning adjustment and the county commission. No date has been set.

So, this is antsy time for people in the area. A young couple who lives across the road from the end of the proposed runway heard about the plan shortly after moving in four years ago.

“Our property is literally 200 feet from the end of the runway,” Jason Walker said on his front porch as he pointed to a spot in the field across the road.

“And our kids play in the front yard,” Juli, his wife added. “We didn’t move to the country to have planes taking off and landing right out our front door.

“This is heartbreaking for us.”

“No Arrowhead Airpark!” signs are plentiful along gravel roads in the area.

Airparks are simply a subdivision built around a runway. Every house has a hangar, either like a large garage or a separate building. Others are essentially hangars with very nice living quarters.

Arrowhead would have all three options, Wilcox said. Half the homes would likely exceed a million dollars in value.

The country’s first airpark was Sierra Sky Park in Fresno, Ca., in 1946 and is still active today.

According to Realtor.com, the country now has more than 700 airparks, with Texas the most at 84.

Some even accommodate jets.

Wilcox describes the concept as simply a community for people who love aviation and airplanes. And like most airparks, he said, Arrowhead would not allow plane rentals, a flight school or any commercial aviation.

He told the recent meeting he would think the locals would prefer his plan over the possible alternatives of giant warehouses, a wind farm or a commercial livestock operation on the property.

He said there would be no flying between midnight and 5 a.m. and no takeoffs after 10 p.m.

Most days, there would be only a handful of takeoffs and landings, he said.

He described the typical airpark residents as mostly retired, probably empty nesters and able to afford a high-end home.

“And they have an airplane,” he said, which adds to the tax bill.

He predicted the project, figuring in assessments on million-dollar homes and planes, would generate about $9 million tax revenue annually for the county.

“That’s $9 million for your schools and roads,” he said.

He tried to sweeten the pot with open-to-the-public block parties and annual scholarships for two high school graduates.

But this was a tough room.

One after another, the opponents stepped to the front and accused Arrowhead of a lack of transparency, skirting safety rules, harming property values, scaring the horses and ramming the development into too small a space.

“It just doesn’t fit on the property,” said Peter Hallberg, who took the lead for the opposition. “Other airparks sit on 300 acres. They are ignoring safety.”

A woman talked about the threat for aircraft from a nearby lake that sometimes has thousands of migratory birds.

Hallberg called the project and its isolated runway a “drug dealer’s dream.” And he blew off the lure of Arrowhead’s promise of million-dollar homes.

“There are already big, nice homes being built out there and they don’t need a runway.”