There was a great line in the recent Brad Klein interview - "Do it cheap. Keep it simple. Make it enjoyable from 6,200 yards. The clubhouse is irrelevant. The most important building is for maintenance."
All the best.
A great line maybe and perhaps fine if you're building a course for Brad Klein. I suspect that he is an outlier. I would bet that a successful club today has to meet the needs and expectations of a wider, more normal clientele.
Where I play at this time, it was built to be a poor man's Preston Trail- good golf course and practice facility, modest, but comfortable clubhouse, adequate, but not over the top maintenance. It was fed by the developer for years, but now that he is dead and most of the development land has been sold, his heirs don't want to subsidize the club anymore. It is in a thriving family area and plans are to put in a swimming pool and greatly expand the dining facilities. We'll see if it pays off, but as it stands today in the Klein mode, it doesn't work.