Photos: Nicole Hamel Left & Above: John Shubert, of Grass Roots Airpark, takes Style photographer Nicole Hamel up in his Murphy Elite Tailwheel. Inset: The clubhouse at Grass Roots Airpark.
Grass Roots Airpark Outside the 1920s-style bungalow clubhouse at Grass Roots Airpark is a marble compass engraved with the inscription, “Seek and ye shall find.” It’s an apt phrase for pilots looking for space to roam or a place to land. Lake and Sumter counties are home to fly-in communities, small public airports, and private grass airstrips that may be overlooked by passing motorists but are well-known to anyone flying overhead. The counties’ rural nature, open spaces, and great flying weather attract
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recreational pilots. And aviation communities, where residents park in a hangar rather than a garage, cater to diehard enthusiasts who find passage to the open skies in their own backyards. “I’ve been flying around all my life and looking down and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that be a great place to have an airport?’” says David Gay, an architect who fulfilled his dream by designing and building Grass Roots Airpark in Groveland. David spent two years looking for property before he found a cow pasture east of County Road 33. He built homes and a 3,400-foot-long turf runway from scratch, and in 2005, opened a beautifully designed and maintained airfield at 20201 Whistling Wire Lane in a scenic locale surrounded by lakes and ranches. Homes and hangars have a vintage touch. The site includes 18 residential lots on the runway; 12 wooded residential lots with runway access via a grass taxiway; nine hangar lots owned by pilots; rental hangars for 32 planes; and the home of David and his wife, Ann. He designed the airpark with fly-ins in mind: an open, central area comfortably parks up to 40 antique biplanes and Piper Cubs, and periodic fly-ins attract anywhere from 100-300 people. The nine hangar lots, known as the Low & Slow Flying Club, come with attached
