Courses and Travel

• Comparative Advantage and Golf in Costa Rica
  by Bob Cullen
  1/30/2012

  Contemplating golf in Costa Rica, I think of the Law of Comparative Advantage. Perhaps you remember it from Economics 101. Put simply, it suggests that things be done in the place where they are done best. You could, perhaps, grow rubber trees in Alaska if you were willing to invest enough in greenhouses and heating oil. But why would you? There are tropical countries much better suited to growing rubber trees. Similarly, you can play golf on a Costa Rican vacation. But should you? Maybe you should reserve your time in Costa Rica for things in which Costa Rica has a comparative advantage, like spotting a Resplendent Quetzal. ...
• Forest Dunes: Bargain of the Century
  by Brian McCallen
  1/30/2012

  Forest Dunes Golf Club, a 1,300-acre development in north central Michigan with a superb Tom Weiskopf-designed course at its core, was completed in 1999 for a reported $40 million but was abandoned before it ever opened. Conceived as an upscale real estate development, the club was later revived by the Detroit Carpenters Pension Trust Fund (one of the original lenders) and reopened 10 years ago. In the face of economic headwinds, it has managed to survive as a semi-private club. In a telling sign of the times, Forest Dunes was purchased in January 2012 by Lew Thompson, a trucking company executive ...
• BOCA MAKES IT BETTER. MIZNER'S "VENICE OF THE ATLANTIC" IN SOUTH FLORIDA
  by Michael Patrick Shiels
  1/23/2012

  The debate about the South Florida peninsula is ongoing: as a vacation spot – or potential retirement/second home option - do you prefer the east coast or the west coast? Are you lured by the view of the expansive power of the Atlantic Ocean from a seaside high-rise, the pink glitz of Palm Beach and Miami’s Latin beat? Or do you prefer the soft sunsets, and sleepy, gated bedroom communities like sandy Sarasota and scrubby-shored Sanibel Island? A little of both, you ask? Without a tectonic compression of the Everglades and a shortening of the “Alligator Alley” highway which crosses them, ...