On the 20th anniversary of its groundbreaking, the community of Ave Maria celebrates amazing growth and the potential for success beyond its founders’ dreams. The small town in Southwest Florida was founded in 2005 by Ave Maria Development LLLP, a partnership of Naples-based Barron Collier Cos. and the Ave Maria Foundation, a Catholic-centric organization led by Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza and Ave Maria University.
The Collier County destination was created from scratch on mostly farmland. Fields of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other vegetables were developed into an unincorporated community between the rural residences of Golden Gate Estates and the wildlife preserves and swampland of Florida’s midsection.
After receiving final government approval in April 2005, developers didn’t waste any time breaking ground on Ave Maria with a big ceremony that month. It would be more than two years, though, before the first resident moved in on June 30, 2007.
Rocky start
The timing couldn’t have been worse for a real estate venture.
“It was only a very brief period of time before the real estate world came to a screeching halt,” says Blake Gable, CEO of Barron Collier Cos.
An incredible crisis gripped the real estate market in 2007 and 2008. The bursting of a housing bubble dunked many mortgagees underwater, causing a surge in foreclosures. The drastic decrease in home values led to the Great Recession.
“When you build a utility plant, when you build infrastructure, when you build amenities expecting a certain level of sales, then you get a fraction of that — it was problematic,” Gable says. “Everybody knows the challenges we faced. There were a lot of really, really good people that are kind of doing what we do, usually on a smaller scale, that didn’t make it through the recession unscathed. So, we were fortunate that we were able to do so.”
Ave Maria Development owes its survival to its strong partnership, which began with a letter of intent in early 2002.
“When you’re in business for a little bit longer now like I have been, you really come to appreciate the value of good partners,” Gable says. “We’ve been legally partners with them, handshake partners since April of ’02, legal partners since July of ’03, and I will tell you I can’t remember one single disagreement. We’ve had differing thoughts on things over the years, but we’ve never had a disagreement. Even in the worst of times, we laid out what we were doing to try to fix things — and for a long time, there were just things we couldn’t fix.”
Today, Gable regrets his placement of Ave Maria’s Town Center, which surrounds the architecturally striking Ave Maria Catholic Church.
“I take full responsibility for it. I’m the one who chose the location [for the town] and I chose the location for the Town Center because it’s right in the middle of that piece of property, which seemed like a logical place to put it,” he says. “In hindsight, you probably wouldn’t build three miles of road to get to the Town Center; you’d do something differently. But, then again, we made the decisions through the lens of the times. I am 100% responsible for a lot of those decisions. There’s a lot of things that I would do differently. We took off a huge bite and it was a very large risk. In hindsight, with a little bit of age and experience, and hopefully, a tiny bit of wisdom thrown in there, I would have done things a little bit differently.”
After the recession receded, it was all systems go for Ave Maria.
“Once the world kind of stabilized, we were able to get a little bit of momentum. Things changed and we’ve been very fortunate,” Gable says. “We’re blessed to be in a part of the world that people find attractive.”
Holy cash cow
Ave Maria shares its name with a traditional Catholic prayer meaning “Hail Mary” in Latin. Because of the community’s roots with a Catholic-based university and a landmark Catholic church in the middle of its Town Center, it’s easy to see why Ave Maria has been mistaken for a Catholic town. But it’s a lot more than that.
“People out there are diverse, and that’s the way it always was intended,” Gable says. “If you were going to build a Catholic town, you wouldn’t have an Episcopalian in charge of the whole thing, which is what I am.”
Gable originally made this statement on national television when media reports brought early attention to the town after founder Monaghan made a couple of offhand comments. Gable still bristles at the religious recoil, which he said was fabricated by the national media.
“On the face of it, it’s absurd, not to mention illegal,” he says. “That was never anything that was real.”
Ave Maria Development also thought Collier County’s 5,000-acre cap on towns was unrealistic. Earlier this year, the partnership successfully petitioned the local government to amend its growth management plan to remove the cap, potentially allowing Ave Maria to grow larger than originally planned.
“When the rules were put in place, that cap was an arbitrary number. I’m not sure where it came from,” says Gable, happy that the cap is gone. “I think it just allows us to plan the community the way it organically wants to grow, as opposed to try to jam a plan into a village or a hamlet or whatever we call those things. That doesn’t really serve any purpose other than that’s kind of how we thought things maybe were going to go 25 years ago when the rules were put in place.”
Ave Maria already has surpassed expectations. For many years, it has been one of the top-selling master-planned communities in the United States. Promoting itself as “a big kind of small town,” Ave Maria’s record-breaking home sales propelled it to the highest-ranking community in Collier County.
“The largest master-planned communities in the country are all around Las Vegas and Phoenix and Houston and Dallas — and The Villages is its own thing — and, obviously Lakewood Ranch outside of Tampa and Sarasota, so for us to be in the top 20 consistently over the last number of years when we’re in little old Naples, Florida, I think it’s a testament to what we’ve done,” Gable says. “I wouldn’t be honest if I said that I ever thought that we would get there, but now that we’re there, I like it and appreciate it because it shows that the market, the families that are buying out there, the people who are trusting us with what is often a family’s largest investment decision, they have trust in what we’ve done and what we’re going to continue to deliver.”
Continued growth
Ave Maria has sold about 5,300 homes. Considering that it has entitlements for 11,000 homes and the probability for more, the town is not halfway complete yet.
Following residential rooftops in Ave Maria, commercial businesses and other amenities have grown significantly in recent years. The Collier County School District expects to break ground in June on an elementary school in the family-friendly community.
Launching last year, Midtown Plaza was another turning point for the town. Sunshine Ace Hardware signed on for a large space in the center of the new retail strip on Ave Maria Boulevard, said Cee Cee Marinelli, vice president of commercial real estate for Barron Collier Cos.
“When they committed to Ave Maria, you knew we had kind of met that critical mass of population that could sustain a bigger box, a national brand. So, we’ve always kind of been waiting,” Marinelli says, noting that hospitality chains Dunkin’ and Cold Stone Creamery quickly followed with units in Midtown Plaza. Other restaurants and retailers round out the mix.
“We had finally met that milestone where bigger retailers are interested and we kind of made it over that hump, sustaining some of these bigger retailers and service providers.”
Both Gable and Marinelli also are excited to see health care providers coming to fill local needs. Naples Comprehensive Health recently opened an immediate care center in Midtown Plaza, and the regional health care provider has future plans in Ave Maria.
“Their freestanding emergency room will eventually lead into a 100-bed hospital campus in eastern Collier,” Marinelli says. “I think health care is going to fill a gap.”
Now the developer has to faithfully keep up with the demand and build the next retail center and spaces for some bigger players. Vacant land abutting developed areas of Ave Maria will be used to expand the community. Most notable are the more than 540 acres near Ave Maria’s entrance off Oil Well Road that have been a sod farm operated by Collier Family Farms.
“A significant portion of the sod farm will be dedicated to commercial,” Marinelli says. “I think that’s where we’ll eventually see some of those bigger box, mid-box retailers.”
Permitting hasn’t occurred yet for the land’s redevelopment, but plans are in the works.
“We are actively planning it,” she says. “We are actively talking to some of these big guys, and they are very interested. We just have to be able to deliver it. It will be a couple of years.”
About 20% of the property — about 100 acres — will be developed for commercial. Single-family homes and multifamily residential units are planned there, as well, Marinelli said.
Across the street, a 300-unit apartment complex is planned near the main entrance of Ave Maria at Ave Maria Boulevard and Oil Well Road. The multifamily project is proposed to have five four-story apartment buildings with a clubhouse, fitness center, resort-style pool, tot lot and dog park, plans show.
Another irregular parcel has more than 325 acres to be developed on the town’s northeastern edge. “That will be a mix, as well, with residential and some commercial,” Marinelli says. “But that’s well into the future. The sod farm and Arthrex Commerce Park are our main focus at the moment.”
The commerce park currently includes the Arthrex plant, which manufactures the Naples-based company’s medical devices and surgical instruments; and Dialum Glass, a Chile-based company building a 90,000-square-foot manufacturing plant and its U.S. headquarters near Arthrex. Opportunities for additional industrial development will be available there.
“We’re working on that connecting road from Ave Maria Boulevard to Arthrex Commerce Park Drive, so there will be an internal connection. As soon as we can get that infrastructure in, which probably will be next year, that will open up another 50 or 60 acres that we can develop in smaller sites,” Marinelli says.
Expect more service-related businesses and contractors to land off Oil Well. The idea is to create spaces for businesses with specialties to fill needs, such as auto repair, air conditioning and swimming pool supplies, Marinelli said.
“We’re excited about where we are, but we’re even more excited about the future,” she says. “I think there’s going to be a lot of fun projects as we move forward over the next few years.”
