Jim, as I and Jason have said above, Wild Horse is not a muni. It is the result of an "intra-state" share offering. And, while that share offering model is the epitome of a capitalist venture, it took on a community effort, quasi municipal (in spirit) flavor as Jason eludes to in community citizen volunteers to do various jobs during the construction. Then, to pay for the land and as a recovery and return to the citizens that bought the intra state shares (I think they were something like $500 a share) they also platted out 39 homesites on the periphery of the course. I bought the last one of them on the spot upon driving into the place to see what they had done there - it was my ideal vision of everything a golf project should be.
In fact, in '92-93 I actually organized a golf course development corporation with home site component and wrote a prospectus for an intra-state share offering that was nearly identical to Wild Horses. Ours didn't sell the prerequisite minimum # of shares to have the subscription funds released from the trust-escrow account to the corporation to go forward with the golf course construction. So we folded our corp and returned the subscriptions to those that ponied up for shares. Something ventured, nothing gained...
Now, that is capitalism, as I understand it -winners and losers. It is just that the ultimate maximum profit motive was not the driving force for the share offering effort at WH. It was capitalism fund raising with a community recreational facility goal. Anyone can now buy a yearly pass (memebership) fee at WH. You don't need to be a share holder or property owner. I hope the board at WH don't get greedy and charge outrageous fees for outside play. I will be willing to bet that such a move would "kill the course" reputationally, and bring dissention and devisiveness to their board based on internal power-play operational planning because greed always does ultivmately destroy good things in the end (form my humble perspective).
Tom Doak, thanks for parting company. Now folks will realize I am not your suck-up psychophant (spelling pun intended).
But, let's just explore your thoughts a little more. I completely understand the inevitable capitalistic motive that any developer/owner will follow who upon having an archie create a special great design would charge whatever the market will bare, even if it is way higher of a green fee than was conceived in the original business plan projections. That is a windfall of great architecture, I think. If people love it and are willing to pay, and the owner wants to make $$$, it is obviously natural to jack it to whatever level possible. If the archie knows that will probably happen because they are supremely confident that the design will indeed generate that much hype and buzz, why wouldn't the archie charge what they know it is worth?
But, look at capitalism slightly different on the Wild Horse model. The tread is called, "will capitalism allow great architecture to remain cheap". I bet that for Dan and Dave, capitalism was all about survival in those days - working at the lowest wages tolerable to "get the work" and subsequently the windfall of them just hitting the design home run at WH. It is capitalism 'all on the come' to build the reputation for future projects where they could charge more. As capitalists, didn't you and all our fav archies do just that? Isn't capitalism a function with many facets and diverse motives, sometimes all in the same project? The owner has the greatest profit motive. But, the archie has a sliding scale of profit motive relative to their reputation and what they can charge at a given point in their career.
I personally wonder if Dan and Dave in their own enterprise apart from their associated work with you big name archies, don't charge enough relative to the outstanding work they have already done. I hope they get to cut a fat hog in the ass on a bigtime high profile project some day. I hope they can show a minimalist golf designer talent to bring in the lowest cost construction of a big project - yet with sound design principles, and allow that owner to pass the savings on to the customer. In that regard, I hope capitalism is true to that model. But, I hope it is with an owner entity that can factor in the low construction cost with the higher design fees and pass it along to we the golf consumers, benevolent capitalist style.
Can you be a benevolent capitalist and be successful?