china Where's the Money?

With so many U.S. designers working in China these days, I have to ask: Are they getting paid?

Art Schaupeter, an architect based in St. Louis, Missouri, is currently working on two projects in the People’s Republic, and he says that he’s “working for a fraction of his usual fee” in the hope that he’ll be rewarded with bigger commissions in the future.

Schaupeter’s projects are in Shanghai and on Hainan Island, and they’re both being built by Meinong Golf Construction, a Shanghai-based company. The course in Shanghai, a stand-alone track called Jia Ding New City Golf Course, is taking shape on what Schaupeter calls “a dead flat site” that’s just three feet above sea level. He expects to make 10 site visits before it opens, most likely in 2011.

Schaupeter, who apprenticed with Keith Foster, designs playable, enjoyable, financially viable golf courses. He's responsible for a handful of layouts in the United States, including Highland Meadows Golf Course in Windsor, Colorado and the Buckhorn in Comfort, Texas.

He says that the contracts from Meinong fell into his lap unexpectedly -– “They wanted an American architect,” he says -– and that they have a certain hurry-up-and-wait quality to them.

“It happened extremely fast,” Schaupeter recalls. “I went there in June [2009] and did some preliminary work, then I just sat around for months. Then they called back in November and told me I had to finish in six weeks.”

Naturally, Meinong had good reasons for shorting Schaupeter, namely that the projects’ developers set their budgets without knowing the true price of design work. Grudgingly, he agreed to work at 80 percent of his usual fee.

But if the projects are truly loss leaders, Schaupeter’s strategy may be working. He reports that he’s already talked with two other prospective clients. And yes, he expects them to drive hard bargains.

“They know the U.S. market is slow, so they expect to get good pricing,” he says. “You have to be prepared to negotiate. It’s part of their culture.”