Aviation Communities

Casa de Shenandoah is the ranch that singer Wayne Newton (“Mr. Las Vegas”) shared with his family for 45 years until financial problems led to a development company buying the property in the hopes of turning it into a Graceland-like museum. That deal has since fallen apart in various bitter lawsuits and allegations with the Newtons being booted out of their home.

The entire ranch is now listed for a mere $70 million with a lengthy slideshow being posted on Yahoo (even more pictures can be found here) as it features eight separate homes, a car museum, acres of stables and corrals, a zoo area, several pools and what interests us the most (since this is an aviation webzine…), a jet terminal complete with a jet!

In response to a comment we decided to add these two pictures for some clarification as the property is near the airport BUT it lacks an actual runway (the aircraft is visible in the closeup):

Over the top and rather tacky? Perhaps. But hey, what do you expect in Las Vegas? Moreover, it could be much worst (click here to see a slideshow of Liberace’s now rather rundown home that was recently bought by a British real estate developer…)

General Aviation news has brought our attention to Mallards Landing Airpark in Henry County just south of Atlanta, which, as you can see from the following picture (and somewhat dated video), is an aviation-centric community thanks to a 4,500-foot long and 150 feet wide grass runway running through it:

The airport is identified as GA04 and features pilot controlled lighting as well as a sophisticated pilot controlled weather station, but the best part about being in an aviation-centric community is that pilot homeowners can easily taxi to the runway from hangars located right on their lots next to their homes.

Mallards Landing is home to about 150 property owners with many of the residents naturally being commercial pilots (after all, the nearby Atlanta airport is the world’s busiest airport and a major hub for travel throughout the Southeastern United States), plus active and ex-military pilots who have flown in every theater of combat from World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

Naturally, any community built around a grass landing strip will have aviation focused events ranging from two annual fly-ins to Bob’s Movie Night at a full-sized “old-timey” movie theater in one pilot homeowner’s hangar (click here to see photos from various community aviation events). There is also a state-of-the-art pool, tennis courts and plenty of green space.

Interested in buying a home in Mallards Landing? A quick look online reveals a 4 bedroom / 4 bath home overlooking the runway and equestrian pastures with a brick hangar (50×50 and includes a loft and half bath) that’s for sale for just $399,000 – a real steal when you think about how much you will save on keeping an aircraft at an airport plus all of the driving back and forth you will need to do!