By any reasonable criteria, Ave Maria should not exist. An hour inland from Naples and Fort Myers, the closest major cities, the Florida town sits alone amid a harsh landscape of fallow ranches and industrial citrus farms. Nearly the entire development, except downtown, is a flood zone. In May, the daily high creeps above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and does not come back down until October. The only major employer, assuming residents of $750,000 homes are not picking oranges, is Ave Maria University.
The city was willed into existence by Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza. After selling his stake in the chain for $1 billion, Monaghan—a devout Catholic and collector of Frank Lloyd Wright memorabilia—set out to design an idyllic Catholic town, a community free of "premarital sex, contraceptives and pornography." After an opening stint in Michigan, the university reopened in Florida in 2007; today, over 6,000 residents call the place home. More are on the way: Last year, Collier County signed off on a thousand-acre expansion of the city.
