An artists colony for the rich

Last year, the Dominican Republic suffered an economic collapse, and the I.M.F. forced the country’s central bank to sell a 2,000-acre tract of lush beachfront property that it owned. A group of about 20 American luminaries formed a consortium to purchase the land, with the idea of building a sort of utopian community, where artists and writers would be invited to stay at cost and the moguls and moneymen who’d financed the place could vacation, play golf and bask in the glow of their artsy neighbors. The list of “founding residents” includes Moby, Charlie Rose, Alex von Furstenberg, the hedge-fund manager Michael Novogratz, fashion designer Lela Rose and, to lend the group a little political weight, Newsweek International editor and TV pundit Fareed Zakaria. New York investment manager Boykin Curry spearheaded the Dominican enterprise.
(Reminds me of the job Marcello Mastoianni is offered in Antonioni's La Notte.)