The Village Club is a private club but also a municipal course: the old Guggenheim estate was bought by the taxpayers and turned into a club for residents. [Out of towners pay higher annual dues, for whatever spots are left over.] The previous owner had a nine-hole course on site, and five of those holes are incorporated into the new 18-hole design. The pro shop moved into the old stables, while the Guggenheim mansion is used as overnight accommodations for residents’ guests.
This was my first municipal project and it might be my last — I was unprepared for the degree to which politics altered the design process, and because the constraints weren’t known until someone objected, almost all of them caused the plan to get worse as it evolved. The experience reinforced my desire to have a single client to answer to, and no one in between who might cause a misunderstanding.
