It began in 1997, when the state Department of Community Affairs declared that the county’s growth plan left thousands of acres around Immokalee up for grabs for developers. Two years later, then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet ordered the booming county to right its planning ship.
In response, deep-pocketed landowners, including the one that owned the 5,000 acres of farm fields that would become Ave Maria, volunteered to help overhaul the county’s growth plan. Their biggest contribution was hiring the consulting firm that did the legwork for the committee charged with crafting new development regulations.
Today, as students move into their dorms and families settle into new homes in the burgeoning town, questions persist about the way a land forgotten became a paradise found.
Is Ave Maria the answer to Collier’s sprawl woes or will it intensify the problem? And how will a town the size of Naples, in terms of population, coexist with the wilds of the western Everglades?