In quiet Waxhaw neighborhood, a noisy fight is simmering over his holiday lights
Neil Heuer says he has spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars creating an extravaganza featuring 60,000 colorful LED lights that sync up with holiday music — and he’d love nothing more than for you to drive out to his family’s Waxhaw house after dark to see it.
The president of his homeowners’ association, meanwhile, has a much different yuletide message for those who might be interested in entering the Aero Plantation neighborhood to view Heuer’s home: Keep out.
Under other circumstances, the 48-year-old semi-retired husband and father of three’s passion project would never even be a blip on the radar of anyone outside this quiet, secluded hamlet, with perhaps the exception of the power company. But in this case, he’s trying to share his Clark Griswold-esque desire to have the brightest, most-over-the-stop show of holiday cheer with the world.
And therein lies the problem.
Heuer has been actively promoting his so-called “High Flying Lights” display as being for the benefit of the general public, having created social media pages for it and even successfully getting it mentioned in guides to the area’s “best” holiday light shows published by CharlotteFive and Charlotte On the Cheap.
“I just want people to enjoy it,” he says. “I’m not trying to win a prize. It’s totally just enjoying putting this stuff together and watching people enjoy it, too. It’s really innocent fun. ... I don’t know why people kind of have their panties in a bunch. I mean, it’s truly remarkable that people could be so full of bitterness and anger — at this time of year, especially.
“I can’t understand it. I really can’t.”
A unique man in a unique neighborhood
To say both Heuer and his neighborhood are, for different reasons, unique actually might be an understatement.
Heuer moved his family up to Waxhaw from Naples, Fla., five years ago after having had it with hurricanes, and about a year after arriving he started decking out their new home for Christmas like it was his job. Since then, it’s ballooned in size each holiday season, turning not just the house but the whole yard into an eye-popping array of lights, lasers, lanterns, music and animation.
This year the show is bigger than ever — about an hour long from start to finish, repeating from sunset until 10 o’clock nightly, with the playlist of more than 15 songs streaming not through outdoor speakers but rather the radios of visiting vehicles (via a tiny low-power FM transmitter he uses to broadcast just far enough to reach people parked outside).
And “the irony,” Heuer says, “is: I’m Jewish. I’m a Jewish guy who runs a huge Christmas show. As a kid, I lived in a relatively Jewish area (in Baltimore), and so Christmas lights were kind of like a unicorn growing up. Once in a while I’d see a big presentation, a ton of lights. I’d be like, Wow, that’s just amazing. So I always wanted to do that.”
For him, it’s not about Christianity. “It’s really,” he explains, “to enjoy the Christmas spirit.”
As for the neighborhood, it comprises just over 100 homes, primarily valued at well north of $1 million, having been founded in the ’60s on meadows nestled next to wildlife-filled forests and two lakes. But what makes Aero Plantation most distinctive are the features nodded to in its name: a lighted airstrip, and streets upon which homeowners’ small planes have right-of-way.
While it is a private neighborhood with privately maintained roads, there are no gates to prevent non-residents from entering. That has sometimes created problems.
For instance, Heuer says, the lakes get stocked every year, and during the warmer months outsiders will come in, ignore “Fishing for Residents Only” signs, catch and take off with fish, and leave trash behind. Periodically, he adds, Aero Plantation has also had challenges with people using the cover of night to run drag races on the airstrip.
So he theorizes that maybe it’s frustration with those things prompting certain residents to suddenly give him grief about his lights.
‘Not appropriate to publicize this’
He says it started this past Saturday night, when a neighbor called to complain about a run-in with a woman who was sitting in a vehicle outside Heuer’s home watching the show. The neighbor said she informed the woman that she was trespassing in a private neighborhood.
The woman apparently refused to leave, and Heuer says he declined to help his neighbor make her leave.
Heuer says it’s the first time since he started putting up lights four years ago that he’s received a single complaint from anyone.
But opposition ramped up quickly. On Monday, Heuer says he got a call about a reader’s request to have his display removed from Charlotte On the Cheap’s guide. (The website as of Wednesday was continuing to feature it.) The same day, The Charlotte Observer received four messages asking for 1200 Baron Road to be removed from its guide, which lists favorites selected by CharlotteFive readers.
“The listing is unintentionally bringing a large number of non-residents into the community,” the sender wrote, “which is creating safety concerns, traffic issues, and potential liability since the roads are privately owned and cannot legally be opened for public visitation.”
Only the last of the four messages had a name and return e-mail address attached to it, but the person didn’t respond to the Observer’s attempt to gather more information about their complaint. So we contacted Debra Badalamenti, president of the HOA, who replied by email to say: “Aero Plantation is a private neighborhood with private roads where non homeowners are not allowed unless accompanied by a homeowner. It is therefore not appropriate to publicize this to the public.”
Repeated attempts to get her on the phone to ask more questions were unsuccessful. Instead, Badalamenti referred the Observer to the neighborhood’s governing documents.
The by-laws have no rule that limits roadway access to residents or accompanied guests. The neighborhood’s rules and regulations, meanwhile, do indicate the roads are privately owned and that “parking of vehicles ... on any street is prohibited”; but they don’t explicitly say non-residents who use them — e.g. party guests, or estate-sale shoppers — are deemed to be trespassing.
For that reason, for the time being, the Observer will continue to allow Heuer’s home to be listed in the holiday lights guide.
And Heuer certainly has neighbors who think the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.
What does this all really look like?
Some of his neighbors, in fact, are pretty loyal fans.
Take Aero Plantation resident Heather Gear; she has three children, one of whom is a nonverbal son with special needs and an extraordinary affinity for Heuer’s holiday show. “He wants to get in the car every night and drive over,” she says.
“It’s certainly not my personal style,” Gear adds, laughing. “My home is all white lights, very traditional. But I don’t personally see it as a nuisance. I think it’s bringing people joy in an economy, and in a season, that can sometimes be very lonely and depressing for some. That’s how I see it, and it brings my one kid a lot of joy.”
Another neighbor — Heidi Siegfried, a grandmother of four — expressed similar sentiment.
“He’s trying to do it out of the goodness of his heart. I mean, he’s just that kind of jovial guy, very colorful and outgoing. It’s too bad that he’s getting some pushback on it,” says Siegfried, adding that her grandkids, who don’t live in the neighborhood, come over to see the lights two to three times a week.
She concedes she can see both sides. “Where we live, it’s really beautiful, a nature preserve, and a lot of people in here don’t want a lot of cars coming through.” That said, Siegfried says the largest crowds she’s seen in front of Heuer’s house consist of “a few cars,” and that when she and her husband went over to watch the show on Sunday, they were the only ones there.
(Also worth noting: The Facebook page he created for “High Flying Lights” has just 70 followers.)
Says Heuer: “I don’t want it to be unsafe. That’s certainly not my intention, to clog the roads. ... I’m trying to be wise and careful about the approach, and certainly, the last thing I want to do is ruffle anybody’s feathers. That’s not the intention of this at all. It’s just to keep people in the spirit. ... But I think that it’s ridiculous to say you can only come in here if you’re with a homeowner. People have yard sales in here. It’s not like somebody who’s having a yard sale goes to the front of the neighborhood to get every visitor who wants to come to their yard sale. ... It’s just all very silly.”
“So I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing — and people are gonna keep enjoying it.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM.
