Adam,
With most courses complaining about losing money, I don't think the perpetual cash machine theory works too well. It does in special places, and I guess we would all want them to be those kind of places, but as mentioned - the condo developer is usually not the same as the golf developer - at least for very long. He wants to get in and get out and leave the marginal profits of golf to someone else.
Tommy,
I was actually talking of my Quarry at Giants Ridge in Minnesota. Does it ALWAYS have to be about Fazio?
I don't like the overly sanitized look at Quarry at La Quinta, but figure that anyone paying over a $Mill for a homesite doesn't want to look at "scarred land" and the developer accommodated.
I haven't really studied many routings to know what "might have been" and consider it an excersise in futility anyway, whether on his, Doak's or whoever's course. And please remember, Fazio did take architecture to "another level" a dozen years in many ways, esp. with Shadow Creek, possibly spawning the anti-Fazio movement precisely because no one could do that better, so they need to do something else.
You may not like the modern style, but its just that - a golf design style. Its not the end of the free world as we know it. And, while you like a rugged look, and we will probably be forced a bit more that way by politics of water as an industry, I have had the pleasure of playing two very high end CC's this week, including a Fazio, and have to tell you, most people want the maintenance to be as high as possible and refined as possible. But you already know that!
My point is that rants may get listened to by those who could change golf, or they may get tuned out. I guess since we are talking about clubhouse siting and you turn it into a rant on all that is bad about Fazio, IMHO, you will be tuned out.