ALPINE — Twenty-five air miles southwest of Jackson, an upscale fly-in community on the banks of the Palisades Reservoir is sprouting quickly.

The Alpine Airport, long a sleepy, unimproved airstrip, is now the site of a $4 million construction project for a fixed-based operator building. Some 60 of 100 planned homes called the Alpine Airpark have also been built, many of which will be tied directly into the airport’s runway, said Bill Wiemann, the developer and pilot behind the project.

“Our main goal is to have a fly-in community,” Wiemann said during a tour of the property in early September. “It’s not going to ever have your airlines in here. It’s more of a general aviation operation.”

He bought the 5,850-foot runway and much of the land alongside it in 2007, and has made many improvements to it since then. Pilots landing in Star Valley are now aided by an automated weather information system, a GPS-approach system and runway lighting.

Because commercial air passengers will never make the trek to Star Valley to catch a flight, Wiemann doesn’t see Alpine Airport as being a direct competitor to Jackson Hole Airport.

Steve Funk, a developer who is collaborating with Wiemann and bought 65 acres of land along the airport, sees it differently. A businessman who is planning to add 50 hangar doors to the land, Funk said he thinks the Alpine Airport could one day draw private planes away from Jackson.

“It’s an alternate,” Funk said. “If you fly in to Jackson, you’re going to pay $3 more per gallon in gas, you’re going to have a landing fee, you’re going to have a ramp fee.

“I’m not trying to pull anybody away,” he said. “I’m just trying to show them what I think is a piece of paradise.”

Hangar space in Jackson Hole is maxed out, Funk said.

Officials at Jackson Hole Aviation, who manage facilities for private planes at the airstrip inside Grand Teton National Park, didn’t return phone calls by press time.

The residences at the Alpine Airpark are surrounded by immense seas of lush green grass and man-made ponds filled with stocker trout. Most fly-in homes, Wiemann said, range from $4 million to about $500,000, which is less than a nice condo goes for in Jackson.

The largest home on-site is massive, at more than 18,000 square feet. There’s a bowling alley in the basement, Wiemann said.

About 60 percent of residents of the fly-in community call Alpine home year-round, he said.

Business has been good, Wiemann said.

“In the last week I think we’ve written about $6 million worth of real estate,” Wiemann said. “We’ve pretty much sold out everything that has a working hangar door.”

The number of homes on site has steadily increased since the native North Dakotan bought the property. Annual hangar fees paid by each homeowner total $2,800 a year and support basic maintenance, snowplowing and other services.

“We refused to participate in the recession,” Wiemann said. “There was no building going on anywhere in the world, and we’re sitting here building million-dollar hangar homes.

“We’re surrounded by national forest,” he said, “and we have a 15-mile lake on one end of the runway and three of the best fly-fishing rivers on the other end.”

This article appeared in the Jackson Hole News & Guide on September 26, 2014.