ORIGINAL: Stickbuilder
Charley,
Not a response to you, but rather to expand on your idea. Try what worked for us. A lot of farmers (some close to urban areas) have put considerable amounts of property into the Greenway program. They can't till the soil, or sell it for development. They can, however, lease it to an AMA sanctioned club to be used for a model airplane flying field.
We were able to lease several hundred acres,
Bill, AMA 4720
I did a bit of research on this. If a club can afford to buy enough land to qualify for the Greenspace program it might be able to establish a buffer around its field large enough to keep development at arm's length. Otherwise, you never know when some developer or government entity will find a way to get the "farmer" to sell out.
Here's an example of a government taking land away for a developer's benefit. There was a wildlife and exotic game park just outside our little town. This park charged a reasonable fee per carload for folks to drive through and view the animals. One end of the park's land abutted IH-10 at TX Hwy 16. This was also the entrance to the park. Some developers came along and wanted to buy that corner strip so they could build a big convenience store & gas station. The park's owners declined to sell. So the developers, being good ole boys, got their cronies on the city council to annex the park's land. The park ownwers couldn't afford the now-astronomical taxes and were forced to sell out. So now they're building another GD golf course out there, with a nice gas station on the corner! Just what we needed.
The above can happen to anyone without the resources to fight this kind of action in court.
CR