Flower

Divine Design

By Cathy Chestnut
Images and Drawing of Ave Maria’s Oratory Courtesy of Cannon Design

The complex journey undertaken by Ave Maria University founder and chancellor Tom Monaghan and his sprawling team of design, engineering and building consultants to cultivate a swath of flat land into a cultural center—to drop a slice of Europe into the FARM fields south of Immokalee—is nothing short of remarkable.

The pioneering denizens of Ave Maria, the innovative town in eastern Collier County, have begun unpacking at their new homes. Five short years in the making, Ave Maria has sprung out of 10,000 acres some 25 miles northeast of Naples that served as productive farm fields for more than 50 years for the Barron Collier Companies, the local juggernaut of land, agricultural and development concerns.

One Bite at a Time

Ave MariaThe road from germination to realization of Ave Maria didn’t begin with doodles on a napkin. Although the process was rather complex, it also was straightforward and seamless, according to the major players, thanks to Monaghan’s resolute convictions tempered with an open-minded approach.

Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza, former owner of Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers and a devout Roman Catholic, founded the private Ave Maria College in 1998 in Ypsilanti, Michigan and opened a branch campus in Nicaragua in 2000. An interim Ave Maria University (AMU) campus was established in Naples in 2003, marking the first new major Catholic university in the United States since the early 1960s. “We wanted to build a major Catholic university in the southern part of the United States with the highest standards,” Monaghan has said. “I can’t think of a better place than one of the fastest-growing areas in the country, which is centered around Naples. This location… will offer the best of both worlds—the great quality of life of Naples and a new dynamic Catholic and educational community.”

But Monaghan wanted more than just a campus: He wanted to realize something “very special, something I don’t feel exists anywhere in the United States today.”

When the executives at Barron Collier Companies learned that Monaghan was looking in the region, “we made a call, sat down and talked to him. And, five years later, here we are,” says Blake Gable, vice president of real estate for Barron Collier Companies and Ave Maria project manager. “It was an opportunity to create a whole community as opposed to just a campus.”

The full text of this article is available in the September 2007 issue of Naples Illustrated and can be found here.