Is this going to work commercially? - if you're going to host lots of horses won't you need to be conveniently near lots of town-dwelling horse owners to pay the livery fees?
Yeah! It will
Half an hour from town is fine and plenty far enough to be "in the sticks" as far as a strip is concerned. Horsey people will happily travel that far for reasonably priced livery. However, they might get twitchy about the idea of a landing strip running through "their" paddocks! In reality it's a non issue, my wife's horses are in the paddock at the end of my strip and are fine as long as they know I'm coming. This does require a LOW AND CLOSE circuit at about 200' so they can "literally" watch you come around. Just appear, and hers go scatty, but they actually watch if they see/hear me coming, it's quite funny to see them looking as I turn finals! However, try convincing prospective horsey people that! It might work if you're cheap enough I suppose
They will want to move well away, so the paddocks will need to be a couple of hundred yards long so they can move to the far end.
Lots of good advice so far, so I can't add much other than to say search for anything strip related ... lot's said before! One other thing, do not be too defensive if you get a complaint. Better to eat humble pie, go and visit the moaner and explain (in a nice way) what you are doing, that they won't suddenly have a vew Gatwick opening and that if they'd like a flight/photo of their house? then that would be no problem. Works wonders!
SS