Wow is that MLive article a joke. I live about 40 minutes from Ave Maria. It might have 1,100 homes [[more like maybe 400), but no way is anything near 11,000 homes. Actually, I was out there yesterday and it's all but a ghost town [[and, no, I'm not calling it a Holy Ghost town). It's very impressive, but really weird. No beach, no golf, nothing but scrub land that he plopped his dream town and university down on [[and got very cheap). It really is in the middle of nowhere. You see a few cars coming to take pictures of the church [[where he installed some salvaged pieces from the torn down Detroit church) and leave. You'll see a few students walking about, but when the summer comes and the students are on summer break, then it really turns into ghostville. They do have some shops and it would be nice if it had more residents, but it's almost like a movie set.

The nearest real town is Immokalee, which is mostly populated by Mexican, Haitian and American Indian migrant workers. Not my idea of a date night location, though there is a small but decent Indian casino nearby. If you want to really get out and do something, you have to drive at least 30-40 minutes to get to Naples or Ft. Myers. If it weren't for their new university president, there's a good chance that the university might have had to close shop.

Certainly not Xanadu by any stretch.