Silverwing at Sandpoint, ID. KSZT
In April we had the opportunity to take a tour with Silverwing’s developer, Michael Mileski, of the demo home at Silverwing and it is an impressive plan.
Silverwing is positioned at the high end of the residential airparks out there. While there is only one unit, which consists of two hangars and 2 homes, the plan is to place quite a few units on the south-southwest corner of the field.
The large demo home sits above a hangar big enough to hold the Citation Jet parked there when we looked at it. Mr. Milleski told us there were new home plans soon to be released that would be a different design. Apparently, future plans are really pretty open-ended for a buyer as long as they obtain approval from an architectural committee.
The airport is home to Daher, the producer of both the Kodiak as well as the TBM turboprop. The runway at KSZT is 5501x 75 feet and the field is home to Granite Aviation, which provides full and self-service 100LL as well as full-service Jet A as well as other flight services. The field has 3 RNAV/GPS approaches as well as a localizer-based approach. One of those approaches is good for altitudes as low as below 400 feet.
We rented a car in Coeur d'Alene and spent an afternoon exploring three more small residential airparks to the north:
Treeport, North of Coeur d’Alene, ID. ID22
Treeport lies about 15 miles north of Coeur d’Alene. The field was a nicely maintained 3,000 x 100 feet grass runway running east-west. The properties on the north side were very nice and for the most part in a forest setting, almost all with a hangar associated. The south side of the airport was signed as private and thus we didn’t get too great of a look, but it is a development with several homes contained within the property.
Hackney Airpark, North of Coeur D’Alene, ID. ID053
Hackney Airpark also lies about 15 miles North Northeast of Coeur d’Alene. The airpark has one grass strip at 3,500x150 feet. The airpark is pretty extensive, with several taxi lanes leading to the runway, all lined with homes.
Western Spur, North of Coeur d’Alene, ID. ID48
Western Spur is equipped with a 2800x100 foot gravel runway but from all indications, this is more of a parcel with an airstrip versus a community of homes.
General Area Observations:
The area around Sandpoint is simply stunning. It sits on the northwest corner of Lake Pend Oreille which is one of the deepest lakes in North America. For a bit of adventure and a good dinner, Priest Lake’s Cavanaugh Bay airfield (66S) is a quick 18 miles to the northwest as the crow flies from Sandpoint. 66S has a 3300x120 grass runway, so with a mountain checkout, it’s pretty accessible and is a short walk to a small inn and restaurant, Cavenaughs at Priest Lake.
33 miles to the south-southwest of Sandpoint is Coeur d’Alene which sits adjacent to a lake of the same name. Another notable feature in Coeur d’Alene is The Beverly Resort. We stopped at StanCraft FBO when we toured a few residential airparks north of KCOE and the FBO is probably the nicest FBO we’ve ever been at. They are decidedly gauged for jets but took care of us equally as well. Several other services are listed in the field.
The closest airline service to any of these is at the Spokane airport, which is served by several airlines with destinations to several major hubs in the US. Spokane (KGEG) is 58 miles as the Cessna flies from KSZT. From Couer D’Alene it's 34 miles or so. Spokane is home to Gonzaga University.
