Naples News20080608

June 8, 2008; Naples News; Ave Maria lacking growth, may affect projects; by LIAM DILLON.

Development in Ave Maria is falling well short of projections, and the lack of growth could affect major efforts associated with the new town in eastern Collier County.

The project immediately affected is the $100 million widening of Oil Well Road — the town’s primary access point — as county officials now are wondering where they’ll find the money for construction and are considering ways to narrow the project’s scope.

In response, Ave Maria’s developers are maintaining they’ve fulfilled their contractual obligations and expect county government to do the same.

Numbers emerging from Ave Maria show a significant gap between the town’s 2005 county-approved plans and what has occurred three years later.

Home sales through the end of last year were 10 percent of what co-developers Barron Collier Cos. and former Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan had expected, according to data from the Collier County Property Appraiser.

Road impact fees — one-time costs for new construction — paid to date are 45 percent of their projected amount, according to county government data.

Those figures translate to 2,200 fewer homes on this year’s tax rolls and a more than $11 million shortfall in impact fee revenue compared to what developers had forecast in 2005.

For more than six months Monaghan has publicly blamed the real estate market for the town’s failure to meet its goals.

That’s still the case, Barron Collier Vice President Blake Gable said.

“Obviously, I think if you were to look at any real estate project in Southwest Florida, it’s going to be below projections right now,” he said.

The statewide market downturn led legislators in 2007, in a bill co-sponsored by the late Rep. Mike Davis, R-Naples, to provide an automatic three-year extension to development orders like Ave Maria’s.

The reason for that extension has led Collier County officials to ask: Where’s our relief?

“If they were receiving benefits due to market conditions, then taxpayers should have one, too,” said Mark Strain, chairman of the Collier County Planning Commission.

Strain first expressed his view at an April meeting. His reference was to the widening of Oil Well Road, a project that would expand the road from two lanes to four or six lanes on an 11.3-mile stretch between Immokalee Road and just east of Camp Keais Road. That project depends on road impact fees for funding.

In 2005, a separate series of agreements with Ave Maria’s developer committed the county to award an Oil Well Road construction contract within six months of receiving environmental permits and final design plans and make a good-faith effort to complete the road expansion by 2010.

In return, the developer would make a series of payments to the county in the form of road fill material, right of way donation and permitting fees, which Ave Maria officials estimated to be worth more than $26 million.

Ave Maria and the county acknowledge that the developer has fulfilled its end of the bargain. But the lack of road impact fees has the county crying poor.

County Transportation Planning Director Nick Casalanguida said Ave Maria should understand the county’s financial situation given its troubles with the market. Both sides met at the end of April to discuss the project’s future.

“Folks right now are a little nervous, but no one is ready to put their boxing gloves on,” Casalanguida said.

County Attorney Jeff Klatzkow said he is reviewing whether the state’s extension to development orders would allow the county to postpone some of its commitments to Ave Maria, too.

Gable said Barron Collier’s attorneys already addressed that matter.

“We have looked into the issue, and it is totally irrelevant,” Gable said. “They’re not tied together in any way.”

Regardless, the county is examining alternatives for Oil Well Road and already has developed 10 new design plans.

Blueprints call for simultaneous construction to add two lanes to Oil Well Road between Immokalee Road and Everglades Boulevard and four lanes between Oil Well Grade and Camp Keais Road. The middle section — adding four lanes between Everglades Boulevard and Oil Well Grade — would be completed once the first two were finished.

However, Transportation Department spokeswoman Connie Deane said those plans have changed.

The first segment will go forward as designed, but the middle area will be put off until there’s more funding. In the last section, the project’s scope could be shortened, she added, depending on the construction contract’s bids.

Gable said his company is open to discussions that would include reducing the last section’s scope. But Barron Collier intends to hold the county to the Oil Well Road deal.

“Without Oil Well Road there is no Ave Maria,” Gable said. “Ave Maria University, the hundreds of people working out there, all the dollars spent, all the charitable efforts and all the plans. None of that happens without Oil Well Road, period. We’ve got an agreement and fully expect the county to live up to it.”

The road widening is in a holding pattern until the county receives permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and South Florida Water Management District.

Recently, the Corps of Engineers requested more information on the project’s impact to panther and wood stork habitats.

The Water Management District is asking for the addition of culverts to restore water flow from Winchester Head, a wetland system located northeast of Oil Well Road and Everglades Boulevard.

David Genson, Barron Collier’s vice president of engineering, said he expected to receive a permit “within the next few months.”

Then the county plans to bid the project.

In the meantime, Ave Maria’s developers said the town is continuing to move forward. Gable cited recent ground-breakings on both the town’s first supermarket and gas station.

“Things are happening,” he said.

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