Drive east from Naples and the landscape begins to open up. Subdivisions thin. Preserves stretch wider. Then, rising from former farmland, the steeple of Ave Maria appears like a quiet declaration: you’ve arrived.
At nearly 5,000 acres, Ave Maria is no accident. Developed by Barron Collier Companies in partnership with Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, the community recently marked two decades since groundbreaking and is about halfway to its planned 11,000 homes. Last year alone, 515 residences sold — a notable figure in a state crowded with master-planned ambition.
For Michelle Mambuca, marketing and PR manager for Barron Collier Companies, the through line is connection. “It’s a planned community, so there’s everything that you need in town,” she says. “It’s mixed use. There’s residential, there’s commercial, and there’s a lot of growth happening now — more homes being sold, more commercial coming, which was the plan from the very beginning.”…