CAA: GA News, "Just drop in - any old time"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@cwnet.com>]

Saturday, 22 April 2000

Just drop in — any old time
Pilots of single- and twin-engine planes are starting to notice Denny and
Terry Nolen’s pet project: The Ruby Star Airpark near Sahuarita. The Nolens
are getting calls about it from all over the country.
By Sara Hammond
ARIZONA DAILY STAR


SAHUARITA — Denny and Terry Nolen built it, and already they are coming.

“It” is Ruby Star Airpark near Sahuarita, and “they” are pilots flying
single- and twin-engine airplanes. The air park — a residential development
surrounding a runway — is named for the former ranch on which it sits.

The 4,300-by-50-foot paved runway won’t show up on aeronautical charts until
next month, but already the strip, near mine tailings and the Sierrita
Mountains, is garnering interest from fliers who see the runway and drop in
to look around, Nolen said. Others have heard about the air park and call to
find out more.

“We’ve had calls from all over the country,” he said. (The phone number is
625-0980.)

The runway is in the center of a 640-acre parcel the Nolens bought three
years ago with the express purpose of developing such a fly-in community.
They got the idea from flying into La Cholla Airpark when they were learning
to fly, and started to dream.

They couldn’t find ample land closer to their home, up the road west of the
air park in what’s known locally as the McGee settlement. Denny Nolen’s
mother was a McGee, and he’s lived his whole life in the area. He and Terry
won’t move to the airpark but will keep a plane there.

The Nolens are ranchers, and he and his son run a construction company.
Flying is a hobby that he and his wife took up together.

“When we make a little money in construction, we spend it out here,” he
said.

Dave Sclair, of Flyer Media Inc. and the Living With Your Plane Association,
said his organization’s directory lists 425 residential air parks in the
country, about 75 to 80 percent of those that exist. Arizona has 17 such air
parks. Florida leads the nation with 51, followed by Washington with 49,
California with 29 and Oregon with 23.

Just four states don’t have residential air parks, he said: Hawaii, Rhode
Island, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Sclair said it is economical for pilots to take the money they’d spend on
airport hangar space and put it into a piece of property. Another benefit is
the convenience of stepping out of the house and into the hangar and rolling
the plane onto the runway.

Also, “It’s just a great place to live, with lots of open space, people with
the same interests and same financial status and probably close to the same
age,” Sclair said.

Sclair said he gets an inquiry about once a week from someone interesting in
moving to an air park, or starting, improving or expanding one.

What’s going to give the Ruby Star project a boost, Nolen said, is selling
the 13 40-acre lots that lie around the runway. As those are purchased, the
Nolens will use the proceeds to extend the taxiway and build hangars and a
two-story pilot lounge.

“It all takes money. And we’ve put in a bunch of money,” he said. In all,
the Nolens have invested about $610,000 in Ruby Star Airpark.

It’s not going unnoticed.

On a recent Thursday morning, Ray and Jill Smith of the Denver area were
loading their Piper Twin Comanche to return home after a visit with his
father, Bud, a retired pilot who also lives up the road from the air park.
Ray Smith is a United Airlines pilot who is looking at Ruby Star as a
part-time retirement location.

“I’d like to live right over here,” he said, pointing to a piece of land
rising at the northwest end of the runway.

Living next to a runway is ideal “for a guy who likes to go play with his
airplane for a couple of hours,” Smith said. He drives 35 minutes from home
to hangar in Colorado.

Bud Smith is 86 and had to give up flying more than 30 years ago because of
health problems.

“This is going to go over big,” said Smith, who has watched the Nolens’
progress on the airpark.

“This took a lot of courage to start and fortitude to complete,” said Smith,
who still loves to go for a spin with his son or another pilot.

Denny and Terry Nolen, who run the construction business together and punch
cows as a team, said they were confident that their dream will be a success.

“You know the movie ‘Field of Dreams.’ Well, ours is here,” he said.

Attached Photo: Denny Nolen, center, with wife Terry and Bud Smith. Flying
is the Nolens’ hobby, but they they took it big time.

ruby.jpg