Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a bunch of planes! And a helicopter too! And the noise is making all the horses go bonkers!
This is what life is like for the people who own farms around the Marion County community of Jumbolair Aviation and Equestrian Estates.
Jumbolair, near Ocala, is a gated enclave for the wealthy owners of private planes. It boasts of having “the largest licensed, private runway in North America.” Its most famous resident is onetime Sweathog and cross-dressing musical star John Travolta, who parks his Boeing 707 right in his own driveway.
Now Jumbolair’s owners want to expand it. They want to build 241 houses and 205 townhomes on about 380 acres. They want to add commercial businesses. They may even open the runway to non-residents.
“There is a desire to build hangars on common areas of the property and commercial areas of the property and rent those hangars out to residents and possibly people who do not live in the subdivision,” one Marion County official wrote in a memo about the proposal.
To nearby residents, that means even more planes and helicopters thundering over the surrounding pastures, scaring the livestock, polluting the air, and occasionally dumping the fuel into their “springs protection area,” tainting the aquifer and waterways.
You can see why local ranchers don’t think this is so super, man. You could even call them “neigh sayers.”
“There are people out here who have lived on their property for generations,” said one neighbor, Jonathan Rivera-Rose Schenck, who’s a comparative newcomer. Expanding Jumbolair so dramatically “doesn’t really fit in the community at all.”
“There are so many safety concerns, it isn’t even funny,” another of the neighbors, Amy Agricola, told me this week. What’s worse, she said, “they tried to push it through under the radar and get it approved.”
It’s another twist in the history of a parcel of land that already has a pretty wild backstory — one that involves everything from elephants to exercise machines to buried bags of cash.
Jumbolair’s list of past occupants tells you a lot about how bizarre life can be in Florida.
Early on, the place was a horse farm owned by socialite Muriel Vanderbilt of the fabulously wealthy Vanderbilt family. She used the property to train her thoroughbred racehorses. Desert Vixen, born on the ranch, later was inducted into the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame.
Another owner, briefly, was Jose Antonio Fernandez of Miami, whose drug-smuggling operation was so large he had to buy his own bank to hide his profits. He pleaded guilty in 1985 to racketeering, conspiracy, drug trafficking, and fraud. Workers later discovered bundles of crumbling $100 bills buried on the property and (allegedly) turned them all over to the FBI.
Next up was Arthur Jones, who made his fortune creating and selling the Nautilus exercise machine. An avid aviation fan, he built the 7,550-foot runway for his fleet of planes.
In 1984, Jones used one of those planes to rescue 63 baby elephants from a scheduled cull of the herd in Zimbabwe. As a result, he turned the property into an elephant sanctuary. There were also rhinos, a silverback gorilla named Mickey and, after while, quite a few crocodiles.
The elephants were the source of the name. since the land was now a lair for Jumbo.
Jones, in his 50s, had married a Revlon “Charlie Girl” model named Terri, then 18, who grew up in Seffner. She was his fifth wife (out of six, if you’re keeping up with the Joneses) and regularly flew to Tampa to get her hair done.
The couple even appeared on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” where, by one account, the cantankerous Jones pulled a gun on host Robin Leach.
In 1989, the couple divorced. Jones’ ex-wife retained custody of Jumbolair and remarried, this time to a jewelry store owner. Terri Jones Thayer, as she was now known, then created Jumbolair Aviation Estates: 38 residential lots with deeds that provide access to her ex-husband’s runway and taxiways to every back door.
“It’s like a cross between ‘Dynasty,’ James Bond, and the Crocodile Hunter,” she told a then-St. Petersburg Times reporter.
In 2013, a new owner took over: Frank Merschman, founder of Big Top Manufacturing, an airplane hangar and fabric structure maker in Perry and a resident of Jumbolair since 2007.
A year later, Merschman bought another parcel of Jumbolair from a holding company owned by a member of the Qatar royal family. The broker: Donald Trump’s longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, who received a $100,000 brokerage fee. He failed to pay taxes on it, which was one of the reasons Cohen wound up behind bars.
By 2019, Merschman was ready to be rid of Jumbolair. He asked for $10.5 million and, two years later, agreed to sell for $1 million less.
The new owners: Robert and Debra Bull of Melbourne. Bull is founder of CMS Mechanical, a national commercial heating and air conditioning company. He’s also an avid boat-racer.
None of the neighbors knew what a drastic change the Bulls had in mind for Jumbolair until the signs went up.
Alyson Scotti was driving by Jumbolair one day near the end of last month when she noticed a row of yellow signs along the property boundary. But the lettering on the signs was too small to read from the road.
“I pulled over and went to read them,” she told me. When she saw they were about a proposed rezoning, she looked up on the county’s website what the Bulls wanted to do. Her reaction to what she read: “Holy cow, they’re building a city!”
This was on a Friday afternoon, Oct. 27. The signs said the rezoning was scheduled to be voted on at the next Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on Monday, Oct. 30.
In other words, only a weekend stood between the Bulls and what seemed like a definite slam dunk.
Upset at what she saw as an attempt to slip something past Jumbolair’s neighbors, Scotti started using her phone and computer to alert everyone about what was going on. She managed to round up quite a few people, many of whom emailed county officials about their objections and signed a petition against Bull’s plans.
At that point, the county staff was recommending a yes vote on both the rezoning and change in land use.
“Mr. Bull and his wife wish to integrate the upscale aviation neighborhood with our beautiful equestrian community to create a premier aviation equestrian oasis, supported with some limited commercial uses,” the county staff’s report said, making it sound like the Bulls would create a haven for flying horses like Icarus.
But by the time the meeting opened on Monday, the staff had changed its tune. They told commissioners they recommended denial. One major concern: increased traffic on the narrow local roads.
Bull’s Ocala attorney, Rob Batsel, started off his presentation by thanking the county staff for a comprehensive report but then added, “I preferred the staff report that came out on Friday and recommended approval.”
Batsel played down the changes the Bulls had proposed, telling the commissioners, “We’re not asking for too much. We think the property owner is entitled to the highest and best use of the property.”
Meanwhile, the opponents had packed the meeting room. When it was their turn to speak, they did not hold back. They, too, worried about the roads. But many more mentioned their concern about the increased aerial traffic thundering overhead and the environmental consequences.
One of them, James Nelson, called Bob Bull “a noise bully” who frequently flies his copter over his neighbors’ property just above treetop level. He accused the Bulls of planning to ruin a quiet area “just so a millionaire can make more money.”
In the end, the planning commissioners voted 3-1 to recommend the county commissioners deny the Bulls’ proposal. Seeing the reversal of the Bulls’ fortunes happen so quickly, Schenck told me, he almost felt sorry for Bob Bull — until later that evening.
“He flew his helicopter over my house for 20 minutes starting at 10 p.m.” he said. “My wife told me, “I feel like I’m in ‘M*A*S*H.’”
He said Bull has repeated the noisy visit every day since then.
“It drives the horses nuts,” he said.
The Marion County Commission is scheduled to discuss the Jumbolair rezoning and land use change next week, on Dec. 5. The commissioners are not bound by what their Planning and Zoning Commission recommended. They could hand the Bulls everything they want on a silver platter.
But the Bulls are apparently nervous about what’s going to happen. I say this because they had their attorney invite all the opponents to a convivial little get-together in one of Jumbolair’s hangars on Tuesday night.
“We understand it can be unsettling to receive a letter about development ‘in your backyard,’ but assure you that our goal is to create a wonderful addition to the neighborhood,” Batsel wrote in his invitation.
Schenck said he saw about 75 people in the hangar. Bob Bull was there too, he said, but never spoke, not even when Schenck tried to ask him questions. Instead, Bull’s attorney and engineer ran the show.
Schenck said the main message the pair delivered was: This massively disruptive development, much like the Marvel movie villain Thanos, is inevitable. Therefore, you should stop fighting it. (If you watch Marvel movies, you know this approach did not work out well for Thanos.)
Batsel also insisted that Bull isn’t pushing this project for the money. According to Schenck, that bizarre assertion prompted a lot of people to ask, “If he’s not in it for the money and the neighborhood doesn’t want him to do it, then why exactly is he doing it?”
They got no answer. I suppose you could say Batsel and Bull didn’t want to address the elephant in the room.
Finally, Schenck said, he and a friend had enough of that Bull — um, I mean hearing about what Bull wanted. They left about 20 minutes before the scheduled end.
But then they stuck around outside the hangar door. They did that so they could buttonhole everyone else as they left, asking them to sign the petition to be submitted to the Marion County commissioners next week. They all did, he said, and now the number of signatures has hit 500.
That suggests that the hangar hangout was much less effective than the Bulls expected.
I’ve tried repeatedly this week to pry a comment out of Batsel or the Bulls, without any success. I kept thinking, “Surely they’ll want to respond to the angry neighbors.” But no, they didn’t even tell me to not call them Shirley.
I wouldn’t count Bull out at this point. He seems determined to win permission from Marion County to expand Jumbolair, no matter what. But as he tries to bring this unwieldy craft in for a landing, he better expect a LOT of turbulence. And he should probably end his helicopter harassment. Otherwise, thanks to Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law, he might face some serious anti-aircraft fire.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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