You'd be much more help to a local muni than a guy who draws plans.
My advice: just go to the two public courses closest to your heart, and offer to give them the same deal: a day's worth of free advice. All for the good of the game.
Jason:
One question. Why did you need to have THREE architects involved in your project?
Again, to be clear, I most definitely do not have a horse in the race to determine if acronym associations are on-balance a positive or a negative. From my armchair, I think say that it's intellectually dishonest to cast them as either white as snow or black as night for the the sake of making a point. From my direct experience in this program, they have been flexible and supportive.
With regard to your points above Tom:
Canal Shores is not a muni. We are a community golf course run by a non-profit association. I don't know if that made us more approachable or not. I suspect it did.
There is truth in the advice that you offer, in my experience, but the way you phrased it diminishes what Dave, Drew, Todd and others have done for us. They have been involved, offering their ideas, advice, and encouragement since I started blogging about our dreams for the course a year ago. They never asked me for anything - they just offered help. And they also came out to visit, knowing that I could not pay them to do so. I communicated with several other architects throughout the process, but in the end, there were only 3 teams I considered, and they were all ones who had engaged with me for much more than a "day's worth of free advice".
I wouldn't say that we "need to have THREE architects involved". We want to have these 4 people involved because of their support of the project and the different things they bring to the table. They were happy to work together. From our perspective:
* Dave is our architect. He is doing the design, and he will be doing the shaping of greens and hazards himself (and calling on his guys if need be) when the time comes.
* Drew is our advisor, and out of his experience, he acts as a practical sounding board. He has also been instrumental in educating our Board about the vision. To this point, Drew has insisted on working pro bono, even though I have asked him for a proposal.
* Todd is acting as Dave's right-hand man on the nitty gritty of making sure that the Master Plan checks all of the approval boxes with the two municipalities and MWRD, all of whom must sign off. Additionally, he is helping us deal with our stormwater management issues as well as the multi-use and habitat enhancement components. Once the work begins, Todd will be coordinating the day-to-day work on the ground. We felt that it would be impractical to have Dave try to manage all of those details from AZ, and Dave was happy to delegate them. Our Superintendent Tom Tully is already stretched too thin, so he was also happy to have Todd's assistance.
* Luke is an architecture geek, grew up playing the kind of golf in Europe that we are drawing upon for inspiration, and loves Canal Shores. It's a no brainer to have a role for him.
There are numerous other ways that we could have gone with this, but we are excited that this is our team. They have been in it from the start, and we feel confident that they can get us to the finish line three years from now. Fortunately for us, the USGA and ASGCA were supportive of our decision.