LIAM DILLON

The 10-year-old Ave Maria School of Law will hold its first class Aug. 24 with about 400 students at its North Naples campus. Employees arrived here earlier this month and construction workers continue buzzing about the 12-acre “Vineyards Campus” — ...

Publix opened this morning at Ave Maria to a crowd jazzed about the first supermarket in a 28-mile stretch from Golden Gate Estates to Immokalee. With the opening, Publix also became the first big box retailer in the two-year-old community.

The Publix at Ave Maria is not carrying condoms, a move the supermarket chain said was a “business decision” based on space and perceived customer preference, adding there was no prohibition on their sale. Access to condoms and other contraception ...

The last time Roy Lenardson went grocery shopping at Immokalee Road and Collier Boulevard, he realized it would be his last time. Lenardson hasn’t found a new supermarket to replace the one 20 miles from his Ave Maria home. Instead, ...

The Ave Maria School of Law’s big move this summer from Michigan to Southwest Florida comes with a big promise. Tom Monaghan, the law school’s founder, has pledged to cover future operating deficits at the law school through 2017, according ...

A Florida Gulf Coast University vice president is a finalist for a president's job at a college in Missouri. Joe Shepard, vice president for Administration and Finance at FGCU, is one of four contenders for the president's job at Northwest ...

Melissa Chaplin, Ave Maria University's women's volleyball coach and sports information director, has taken a women's volleyball coaching job in North Carolina, according to Ave Maria's athletics Web site.

What has become a regular occurrence for Tom Monaghan happened again Wednesday afternoon. Monaghan, 71, strode to a blue ribbon with scissors in hand. “I’ve done this with hundreds of pizza shops,” Monaghan joked to the crowd of 100 people. ...

A former Ave Maria University board member warned Thursday that the school could face the same crisis as the banking and automobile industries if university leaders don’t change the way they do business. Massachusetts entrepreneur Vic Melfa left the university’s ...

When formally announcing the new name of Ave Maria’s K-12 private school, headmaster Dan Guernsey quoted from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, “The Rhodora.” “Beauty is its own excuse for being,” Guernsey said. Naples philanthropist Jack Donahue knew the poem ...

Vic Melfa, 73, a Massachusetts entrepreneur who was appointed to the board in June is no longer a member of the trustees, the university's governing body. Approached in Ave Maria's town center with fellow board member James Holman, both confirmed ...

The beachfront Pelican Bay home of Tom and Connie Galloway overlooks the soft Gulf of Mexico waves. For their 2009 Naples Winter Wine Festival vintner dinner, the Galloways decided they wanted the water even closer. The 30 guests attending the ...

As they have for close to two years now, Naples city leaders expressed their support for annexing Keewaydin Island. Also, as they have for two years, Naples city councilors ended a public meeting wanting more information. At its workshop meeting ...

The city of Marco Island’s attempts to restrict boat anchoring have run aground again. Last month, the local appellate court dismissed the city’s appeal of a Collier County Court ruling that declared a city ordinance restricting anchoring in its waterways ...

About 750 people attended a Mass at St. Agnes Church in Golden Gate Estates Wednesday evening to honor the 25th anniversary of the Catholic Diocese of Venice. Diocese of Venice Bishop Frank Dewane celebrated the Mass along with 20 other ...

Florida Gulf Coast University’s former president has returned to higher education. Hodges University hired Bill Merwin, FGCU’s president from 1999 to 2007, as a consultant to develop Hodges’ planned or deferred giving program. The program will target posthumous donations from ...

Much of the Island’s top news items of 2008 centered around power.

This year was one of beginnings and endings for the City of Marco Island. Marco Island hired only its second permanent city manager, Steve Thompson, and second permanent police chief, Thom Carr. New controversies emerged that tested both. But the ...

Andrew Guidry’s doctor’s office sits in the shadow of Marco Island City Council’s chambers, the room where he had hoped to spend the next four years. In January, Guidry and three other candidates running primarily on their opposition to the ...

Andrew Guidry’s doctor’s office sits in the shadow of Marco Island City Council’s chambers, the room where he had hoped to spend the next four years. In January, Guidry and three other candidates running primarily on their opposition to the ...

Behzad Afshar-Naseri had just woken up when he heard the boom. "It sounded like a house blowing up," said Afshar-Naseri, 31. "It shook everything. I started hearing screaming. "It sounded like death." Afshar-Naseri ran across the street, saw a friend ...

A Marco Island police officer begins formal disciplinary proceedings Tuesday afternoon that could lead to the end of his career as a law enforcement officer in Florida. Officer Stephen Mariani faces three counts of excessive use of force before a ...

Before the election was called late Tuesday for Barack Obama and before Florida became Obama’s, too, Collier County Democrats watched CNN with the volume on full blast at the Inn on Fifth in downtown Naples. CNN conservative commentator Bill Bennett ...

Voters flowed through polls in Collier and Lee counties on Election Day like ballots through a vote-scanning machine. Well, almost. There were few reports of long lines at Southwest Florida’s precincts after the early morning rush subsided, despite an estimated ...

Beyond the occasional jammed scanner, another precinct malfunction is surfacing: Pollworkers misinformed about press access to voters. Pollworkers barred a Naples Daily News reporter from an Estero precinct this morning when he tried to conduct exit polling in the parking ...

A Marco Island police officer is back on the beat after a battery investigation that included a video that a law enforcement expert said would “shock” the public. Officer Stephen Mariani, 50, is seen striking and pepper spraying handcuffed men ...

A veteran Marco Island police officer is recovering after a personal watercraft crash early Sunday evening left him and a female passenger floating in the water for as long as an hour before help arrived. Cpl. Kevin Hennings, 35, a ...

If you consider a potential City of Marco Island takeover of its electricity services a power surge, then Wednesday afternoon began the long and complicated process connecting those circuits. The city held its first meeting of the “Electric Municipalization Ad-Hoc ...

In Everglades City, Tropical Storm Fay brought more pleasure than pain. At least for the kids and dogs. Puddles of rippling water became a wading pool for Camden Koeppen, 2, and his sister, Lillian Koeppen, 1, who danced and splashed ...

As a light rain began falling near the Naples Pier on Monday afternoon, Peter Clements snapped photos of his three children digging in the sand and playing on the beach. The 41-year-old has been vacationing with is family in Florida ...

They look like ramshackle utility meters, a series of metal contraptions tied to wooden posts. Beneath them are 16 sections of iron pipe buried in the corrosive soil of Plantation Island. The sight is unusual for Plantation Island, less than ...

It was a rainy afternoon during a rainy week of vacation for Heather Schuett, who was housesitting her uncle’s home on the main thoroughfare of Marco Island, Collier Boulevard. Deep into an Amy Tan book, she took notice of her ...

They’re calling it the “Electric Municipalization Committee.” A better name might be the Marco Island Menagerie. Twenty-six islanders of all stripes and sizes have signed up for a Marco Island City Council-authorized committee to hire a consultant and study a ...

Ave Maria’s founder is selling a substantial land holding in North Naples. Tom Monaghan, the chancellor of Ave Maria University in the planned 5,000-acre town with the same name in eastern Collier County, will sell a 59-acre site at Immokalee ...

Until Monday, there had been two months of talk about a Marco Island city takeover of electricity services. Now there’s some action. The Marco Island City Council decided 6-1 to form an ad hoc committee and hire a consultant to ...

The goose that laid Marco Island's golden egg has lost much of its luster. Gone are the days of double-digit increases in property values that filled city coffers with tax funds. Here is a nearly double-digit drop in island property ...

Atop a stage between a large American flag and a large State of Florida flag, Lee County Electric Cooperative Spokeswoman Karen Ryan introduced a group of cooperative employees to a round of applause. Ryan followed by introducing City of Marco ...

Everglades National Park soon might have a new tour-boat operator for the first time in nearly 50 years. Park tours currently are run locally by Everglades City Mayor Sammy Hamilton Jr. through his business, Everglades National Park Boat Tours Inc., ...

On the one hand, Marco Island City Councilman Ted Forcht doesn’t like the idea of owning a power company and appreciates the service from the city’s electricity provider, Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC). On the other, Forcht would love to ...

If the city of Marco Island goes forward with a plan to bury the island’s electric wires, it will occur under its direction, city officials decided Monday. The city will take the lead by sending out to bid a pilot ...

Expect electricity at the City of Marco Island’s enterprise fund budget meeting Monday. City council will discuss a pilot program that, if approved, will bid out contracts for laying some of the island’s power lines underground. But that discussion could ...

It started when an Irish step dance judge told Ben Stone he had horrible flexibility during his performance. Stone’s solution was to stretch his legs in a split for up to five minutes at a time. Over time, his muscles ...

A troubled shopping center’s issues with the City of Marco Island continue to escalate. In April, the plaza’s developer Leon Agami through his company Venetian Investments filed suit in Collier County Circuit Court against the city over the outdoor restaurant ...

Two Marco Island council members are interested in examining a municipal takeover of the island’s electrical services, which are now provided by Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC). This came about amid recent negotiations between the city and LCEC regarding placing ...

Ave Maria School of Law’s move to Southwest Florida continues to barrel forward, despite a major announcement Thursday regarding the school’s new location when it opens in summer 2009.

Interviews with diocesan and university officials about an oratory deal indicate it gives religious control to the diocese, civil control to the university and significant flexibility to change the arrangement’s terms.

Tourists from all across the world are trekking the 35 miles from downtown Naples to the hinterlands of eastern Collier County on a journey to see a 100-foot church, a new university and the early results of pizza-man Tom Monaghan’s ...

What was once just a tomato field is now holy land. What was once just a building is now a sacred place. Ave Maria and the Roman Catholic Church joined Monday in a 1,500-year-old ceremony that dedicated the town’s 100-foot, ...

There was an air of excitement as folks lined up for coffee this afternoon, the sense that a historic event was occurring. "What it means to me is that this is the inauguration of a spiritual center," said Deacon Joe ...

Ave Maria officials handed out all of the tickets for oratory seats at this afternoon's dedication Mass at Ave Maria's oratory. Organizers began handing out tickets around 8 a.m. this morning at the building's steps.