NZ’s first residential airpark offers a one-of-a-kind lifestyle.

Imagine waking up in your brand new home, making yourself a cuppa, then being airborne a few minutes later.

Getting to your plane would be a breeze – it’s just down the hall, next to your car in your garage. There’s no check-in to worry about, no airport queues. And by the time you reach altitude, that cuppa is still warm…

It’s a lifestyle familiar in Florida and Texas – and it’s coming to New Zealand for the first time.

Bringing destinations all around the country to within just a few hours’ flight from your doorstep, and itself just a short drive from Hamilton, Te Kowhai Airpark is the country’s first purpose-built residential aviation community, marketed by Lodge Real Estate.

There are now only nine sections left in stage one, allowing people to build homes that let them drive in from the road on one side, and taxi their plane out the other. This exciting lifestyle is a vision long held by a group of aviation enthusiasts including Air New Zealand captain Dan Readman, Regan Brown and Paul Andrew, all of whom learned to fly at Te Kowhai.

“Our common interest is flying,” says Paul Andrew. “We’re not jet pilots, we don’t own helicopters, we’re just general aviation enthusiasts with a diverse range of skills”.

From playful excursions in Bantam microlights to Readman’s captaining a Boeing 777, their experience levels might be at different ends of the spectrum, but what’s shared is a serious passion for flight and for the lifestyle opportunities of Te Kowhai Airpark.

“Being able to live on site and have your airplane at your own house, at your own property, is just amazing,” Andrew says.

Intended to provide a truly unique lifestyle, Te Kowhai Airpark thoughtfully balances a variety of features. Custom residences sit on north-facing lots, with covenants and design guidelines maintaining property standards. Planes are housed in private hangars, and some can be parked in garages on their owners’ private properties. That would be quite the conversation starter while taking guests on a tour of your new house.

Beyond aircraft, Te Kowhai Airpark offers space and security – including number plate detection and the latest in CCTV technology – for storing larger toys. Whether it’s a classic car collection, boats, caravans, motorhomes, or other prized recreational equipment, the facility provides exceptional protection for your valuable assets.

For the pilot who wants to land and taxi right to their home, there’s a well-maintained 983m runway, with aerodrome facilities to support its pilots. And those living at Te Kowhai Airpark will come together as a vibrant connected community, with thoughtful phased development, communal spaces, and membership in the owners’ association that will guide the Airpark’s future.

There’s a superb quality of life to enjoy at ground level, too. Te Kowhai has a decile 10 primary school, is on bus routes to excellent secondary schools, and has all the amenities of a vibrant small community – cafes, supermarkets, and a fish and chip shop. Huge shopping centre The Base is a few minutes’ drive away, while Hamilton CBD is around 15. Boaties and surfers alike will enjoy the proximity to Raglan, which is a 35-minute drive from the airpark.

Nearly a decade of planning has gone into the details, tackling rezoning, compliance and red tape. Andrew and his partners took an urban planner on a visit to 15 different US airparks to learn what would work (and what wouldn’t) back home. They met with management, homeowners’ associations and residents, and were excited by what they learned.

“The big ones for us were in Florida,” Andrew says, “Spruce Creek being the biggest.” About the size of Cambridge, it has 600 homes, three runways, two golf courses and was for a while home to John Travolta and his private fleet. The scale offered by Te Kowhai Airpark is more suited to New Zealand’s way of life, but what the overseas examples make abundantly clear is the popularity of the lifestyle they offer.

“It didn’t matter how much money you had or didn’t have,” Andrew says, “if you had a shared passion for aviation, you could have a great lifestyle. There were literally multi-millionaires living beside newlyweds who didn’t have much money at the time, all part of this great community.”

Andrew, who already has his name on a section and uses his aircraft as part of his business, looks forward to the potential. “I can fly to Christchurch in two hours and 15 minutes,” he says. “In the same time it would take to drive 40 minutes to Hamilton Airport, check in and wait for a minimum of 30 minutes before even taking off, I’m almost there.”

“It’s just going to be amazing,” he says – a sentiment shared by Te Kowhai Airpark agent Simone Parkes of Lodge Real Estate. With a bit of an aviation background herself, she’s excited by the spontaneity that will be afforded: “Being able to wake up in the morning and look outside and go, ‘Gosh, it’s a stunning day. I think I might go for a flight. I might pop to Pauanui for lunch. I might go to Raglan. I might take some friends up to Waiheke for the day.’ That’s very special.”

It’s a lifestyle and community like no other, where the best of New Zealand is at your doorstep – both figuratively and literally.

For more information, visit: tekowhaiairpark.co.nz