Ridgetop Estate with Fairfield County's Only Private Landing Strip is Suddenly on Newtown's Radar

Dec. 16—NEWTOWN — From the air, it looks like a large fairway, bordered on both sides by a thick canopy of trees.

But you can't land your airplane on a fairway.

So, for the last 75 years the owners of this ridgetop estate overlooking Newtown's farmland have stayed in the good graces of the Federal Aviation Administration to maintain what is today the only FAA-approved private airstrip in Fairfield County.

The 2,000-foot-long, 200-foot-wide grass runway — registered with the FAA as Flying Ridge Airstrip — is operational and up to code.

What is not up to code on the 26-acre residential estate is a cottage and a barn that was converted to a two-bedroom apartment without Newtown's permission.

The Planning and Zoning Commission will vote Thursday whether to give the owner permission to subdivide his property at Platts Hill and Orchard Hill roads into four lots and render the estate in compliance with Newtown code.

Strictly speaking, the airstrip which owner Santo Silvestro uses for his single-engine plane is not on the Planning and Zoning Commission's radar. The commission's purview is the details of the subdivision.

But questions about the airstrip and its links to the inventor and world traveler Robert E. Fulton Jr. who once lived there have come up in the public hearing, which was closed earlier this month.

"Is this property going to be used as an airport?" asked commission member Corinne Cox at a Dec. 2 public hearing.

No, responded the estate owner's engineer Steve Trinkaus. The owner has a private plane, with no plans to build a control tower or attract more traffic.

"The owners are not going to sell the lots," Trinkaus said at the Dec. 2 public hearing. "They will just own four parcels instead of one big parcel."

When Cox asked about the noise, Dennis Bloom, the commission chairman noted "the airstrip has already been approved."

The effort to bring the estate into conformity with Newtown code is the latest chapter for the Flying Ridge property, which made headlines when it was on the market in the last decade.

"It offers its owner a unique way to bridge the gap between a rustic and quiet Connecticut home and the energy and buzz of Manhattan's Wall Street," reads a 2011 listing from Christie's International Real Estate. "Flying Ridge is just 49 nautical miles from the Wall Street Heliport, and the travel time by helicopter can be done in as little as 22 minutes."

At the time, the estate was owned by the family of Robert Edison Fulton Jr., who the New York Times described in a 2005 obituary as "an adventurous inventor whose more than 70 patents included a car that could fly and a rescue system for spies behind enemy lines that was used by the C.I.A. and a James Bond movie."

And that's not all, the Christie's listing boasted.

" Mr. Fulton also is famous for his 18-month solo journey around the world on a motorcycle in the early 1930s—an adventure he chronicled in his 1937 best-selling book, "One Man Caravan."

A 2018 real estate listing suggested that future owners of Flying Ridge would share the same love of adventure.

"The estate comprises a main house with a ... cathedral ceiling great room, an airstrip house and observation tower, workshop dwellings and barns (and) the half-mile grass runway is suitable for fixed-wing single engine aircraft, as well as helicopters," reads a listing from realtor.com. "Flying Ridge combines these unique commuting advantages with the elegance of country life in an unspoiled, charming rural CT community that has excellent services and schools."

[email protected] 203-731-3342

___

(c)2021 The News-Times (Danbury, Conn.)

Visit The News-Times (Danbury, Conn.) at www.newstimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.