Ave Maria, Florida

Ave Maria University

Downtown area of city.

Front of the chapel .

Front and side view of church.

Today John and I thought we would drive around today and go through the town of Immokalee, Florida, which is a town where a LOT of migrant workers live and is predominantly Spanish. Then we drove onto a town called Ave Maria, Fl. This is a town that was started by Tom Monaghan, the owner of Domino's Pizza, for a catholic university and town. He partnered with development company to build this town. There is also a "Dell Web" community here. He started this idea in Michigan and ran into zoning trouble etc...so decided to do it in Collier Co. Florida and is doing pretty well. The university opened in 2007. The also have a future site for a law school. They are build on the ideas of the Catholic church, ie: no abortion, pornography etc... and I guess the ACLU is giving them some problems. It is an interesting town...but I kind of got the feeling that it was "The Stepford Community" . Pretty sterile...or cold feeling.

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There are about 12 of us going to dinner tonight..I will post pictures later.