Hello, The Sea Ranchers. I’m Barney Kilgore, former managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. I operated the Journal with two principles. The first is that businessmen across the country are quite alike. Their interests are the same, from the businessman in Portland, Oregon to the businessman in Portland, Maine. Second, businessmen are human beings just like the rest of us, and they have interests that go well beyond the profit and loss statement or the balance sheet of their companies. They are very much interested in the cultural affairs of the country. That includes symphonies, art, theater and music and, of course, stopping certain cultural movements before they get out of control.

Before I passed away in 1965, I heard rumors that a planned community on the Sonoma coast was experimenting with some new architectural ideas, including condominiums and homes that shared common design elements–much more like European villages than Californian suburbs. Some of my colleagues here at The Journal said it sounded like a fancy Kibutz. I called it what it was: hippy bullshit.

I’m pleased to announce that the nightmare is finally over. It took nearly 60 years for the hippie idealism to end at The Sea Ranch. It’s done and the best news is that their ideals can be sold at a healthy profit. Our recent article in our Luxury Real Estate section of the Journal highlights the new business opportunity available to investors:

• In the past six months, 34 homes sold in The Sea Ranch for an average cost of about $1.5 million
• One resident purchased a home at The Sea Ranch in 2002 for $486,000 and sold it two years later for $1.2 million; another house they purchased at The Sea Ranch for $1.7 million is now on the market for $4.5 million
• One family recently purchased a small walk-in-cabin for $475,000 and sold it a few years later for $725,000
• The Sea Ranch home of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, sold for $12 million in 2021
• There are currently seven homes on the market at The Sea Ranch ranging from $930,000 to $8 million– just out of reach for all of those filthy hippies

The transformation of The Sea Ranch from an experimental commune into a high-demand enclave demonstrates a timeless lesson in business: even the most idealistic of movements can, given enough time and entrepreneurial acumen, be turned into lucrative opportunities. As one of those old hippies at The Sea Ranch, Milton Friedman, once said, “the principles of enterprise and value always reassert themselves over the whims of utopian aspiration.”

So, my fellow businessmen, seize this moment. The cultural evolution at The Sea Ranch marks not just the end of a quaint, naive dream but the beginning of a new era of profitable, upscale living. What better victory over those freeloading hippies is there than that?

Yours in prosperity,
Barney Kilgore, Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal emeritus

.