Cloisters Development Group
Business Plan · Project A
A Heritage-Inspired Hotel & Gathering Place
Ave Maria, Collier County, Florida
The Cloisters at Ave Maria is a 60-key boutique hotel and event venue to be developed in Ave Maria, Collier County, Florida. The project is designed by Duncan G. Stroik and developed by Cloisters Development Group as a purpose-built gathering place for a community that has consistent, recurring demand for exactly this kind of venue and nothing currently capable of serving it.
Ave Maria University generates a steady cadence of visits from families, alumni, and institutional guests. The surrounding region draws weddings and retreats year-round. The town has no boutique hotel, no dedicated event venue, and no property that functions as a community gathering place. The Cloisters is designed to fill that gap — not by competing for transient travelers, but by becoming the default setting for the significant events that Ave Maria already produces.
The project is capitalized at $49.3M, structured as a 60/40 debt-to-equity split, and underwritten to an 11.7% net LP IRR at a deliberately conservative 70% stabilized occupancy. Full financial detail — including pro forma, sensitivity analysis, waterfall mechanics, and IRR matrix — is set out in the accompanying Investor Financial Summary.
Ave Maria is a planned town of approximately 6,000 homes, with neighboring communities under active development across Collier County. It is one of the fastest-growing communities in Southwest Florida, built around a walkable, classically designed town center and anchored by Ave Maria University — a Catholic liberal arts institution with approximately 1,300 students. The residential community generates a base of daily demand that a conventional tourist market never provides: residents need a restaurant, a gathering place, and a venue for the events of community life.
The University adds a consistent layer of institutional visitor demand: family weekends, prospective student visits, alumni gatherings, graduation, and a calendar of academic and religious events that bring guests from across the country. The broader Collier County region adds a third layer — Southwest Florida is an active wedding and retreat market, and Ave Maria's distinctive character makes it a natural destination for events that require a setting with meaning and permanence.
At present, no venue exists capable of serving any of these layers at a high level. Ave Maria has no boutique hotel, no dedicated event hall, and no property that functions as the community's gathering place. The Cloisters is designed to fill that gap — serving residents as a daily destination, the University's visitors as the obvious place to stay, and the regional wedding and retreat market as the defining venue for significant events.
The investment thesis rests on a straightforward observation: in communities defined by a strong institutional anchor, event demand tends to concentrate at a single venue perceived as the appropriate setting. That perception is not created by marketing — it is created by the quality and character of the physical environment. A property that feels permanent, beautiful, and suited to meaningful occasions becomes the default choice. Once established in that position, it is very difficult to displace.
Ave Maria has the institutional anchor, the recurring demand, and the geographic containment that makes this dynamic achievable. What it lacks is the property. The Cloisters is designed to be that property — not a hotel that happens to have an event space, but a purpose-built gathering place around which a hotel program is organized.
The Cloisters at Ave Maria will be developed on a 2.84-acre site on Ave Maria Boulevard, Collier County. The program comprises 60 hotel keys, a 3,800 SF event hall, a shared kitchen, a full-service restaurant and coffee bar, six retail shops organized along a covered arcade, and a central courtyard with fountain and colonnade. Total gross building area is 63,000 SF across a site with approximately 77 parking spaces per the Ave Maria Town Center 1 shared parking regime.
The project is being developed in collaboration with Duncan G. Stroik, whose work is grounded in classical principles and designed to endure. The design emphasizes proportion, material quality, and spatial coherence — buildings that feel established from the moment they open and that become more relevant, not less, as they age. The central courtyard and cloistered walkways are not amenities; they are the primary venues for the events around which the entire program is organized.
Total project cost is $49,317,303, encompassing hard construction, soft costs, FF&E, land, site work, pre-opening expenses, developer fee, contingency, and construction financing. The $440/SF hotel rate reflects CMU exterior wall construction — the natural structural system for classical load-bearing bay geometry — with full Stroik execution on all public and street-facing surfaces. The $900/SF event hall reflects full structural masonry, stone floors, vaulted ceiling, and bespoke ornamental detail throughout.
The 60-key program is organized across four tiers. The mix is designed to serve the full range of Ave Maria demand — from university families and weekday contractors at the standard tier, to wedding parties and diocesan guests in the suites — while producing a blended ADR of $471. Scale is intentionally constrained to preserve scarcity and operational quality.
The property generates revenue across four streams: hotel rooms, hotel ancillary (food and beverage consumed by guests), the event hall, and retail and restaurant tenants. At 85% stabilized occupancy, total revenue reaches $11.5M and net operating income reaches $4.3M — a 37% NOI margin. At the base case of 70% occupancy, NOI is $3.5M on $9.6M of total revenue.
Event revenue is the distinguishing characteristic of the model. The event hall is programmed for 78 events annually — 38 weekend and destination events at $8,000 each and 40 weekday and corporate events at $2,500 each — producing $404,000 in direct hall rental fees. The hotel additionally captures a 20% commission on preferred caterer food contracts and operates bar service for all events — together adding approximately $269,000 in high-margin event revenue with minimal additional overhead. Events are not incidental to the program; they are the primary mechanism by which the property establishes its position and sustains its pricing power.
The restaurant and coffee bar are designed to serve both guests and the Ave Maria community as regular destinations. Local patronage drives daily utilization independent of hotel occupancy and reinforces the property's role as a social center — which in turn supports event demand. Six retail units along the covered arcade are leased at market rates, generating stable income with no operational burden on the hotel.
The project is capitalized at $49,317,303, financed through a combination of 60% senior debt and 40% LP equity. Senior debt is structured at 6.5% fixed rate with 25-year amortization, producing annual debt service of $2,397,557. LP equity of $19,726,921 is raised from accredited investors through a limited partnership structure with an 8% annual preferred return, return of capital at exit, and a 70/30 LP/Sponsor residual split.
| Capital Structure | Amount | % |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Debt — 6.5% fixed, 25-yr amortization | $29,590,382 | 60% |
| LP Equity — accredited investors | $19,726,921 | 40% |
| Total Capitalization | $49,317,303 | 100% |
| Waterfall Structure | Term |
|---|---|
| Preferred return — LP | 8.0% per annum |
| Return of LP capital | At exit, before promote |
| Accrued preferred return true-up | At exit, 100% to LP |
| Residual split — LP / Sponsor | 70% / 30% |
| Developer fee | 4% · at completion |
| Asset management fee | 1.5% of gross revenue |
| Property management fee | 4.0% of gross revenue |
At the base case of 70% stabilized occupancy and a 7.0% exit cap rate, the project produces an 11.7% net LP IRR and a 2.56x equity multiple over a 10-year hold. At 85% occupancy and a 6.5% exit cap, the LP IRR rises to 16.7% on a 3.60x multiple. DSCR breakeven is approximately 49% occupancy — a substantial margin below either scenario. The full pro forma, sensitivity tables, and IRR matrix are in the Investor Financial Summary.
Demand capture begins before the property opens. The strategy is to establish The Cloisters as the future venue of choice in Ave Maria prior to completion — securing wedding bookings, forming partnerships with University stakeholders, and building a pipeline of institutional events that activates the property from day one. This approach compresses the ramp-up period and reduces Year 1 exposure. The base case underwrites Year 1 at 65% occupancy, which is already covered by debt service at a 1.34x DSCR.
Early engagement with Ave Maria University is central to this strategy. The University generates consistent demand for accommodation and event space tied to its academic calendar — convocation, family weekends, alumni events, graduation, and diocesan gatherings. A property that positions itself as the University's hospitality partner before opening arrives with a committed demand base rather than building one from scratch.
The regional wedding market provides a second demand channel. Ave Maria's character — a classical town built around a Catholic institution — is a natural draw for destination weddings. Outreach to regional event planners and early booking programs are designed to establish the event hall calendar well in advance of opening, creating visibility and social proof that accelerates broader market penetration.
The primary execution risk is design quality. The model depends on producing a property that genuinely distinguishes itself — one that feels appropriate for significant events and that guests want to return to. Value-engineering is carefully bounded to ensure that savings never compromise the surfaces and spaces guests actually experience. Stroik is directly engaged throughout design and construction, not simply as a name attached to a set of drawings.
The 10% contingency budget — above the industry standard of 5–8% — provides meaningful protection against cost variability without requiring any reduction in design scope. Fixed-rate senior debt eliminates refinancing risk over the hold period. And because the project is underwritten at a conservative 70% occupancy with debt service covered at approximately 49%, there is genuine margin between the base case and the point at which financial performance becomes stressed.
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Design execution | Stroik directly engaged; value-engineering limited to non-guest-facing elements |
| Demand shortfall | Pre-opening event pipeline; AMU partnership; DSCR breakeven at ~49% occ |
| Construction cost overrun | 10% contingency; fixed-price scope where possible |
| Ramp-up delay | Pre-committed events reduce Year 1 exposure; debt covered at 65% occ |
| Competition | Geographic containment; no competing product exists or is planned |
| Interest rate risk | Fixed-rate debt locked at construction closing |
The Cloisters at Ave Maria is designed to become something that resists direct financial description: the place where Ave Maria's most important moments happen. Every wedding celebrated in the courtyard, every family weekend anchored by a stay in the hotel, every alumni gathering held in the event hall deepens the property's association with those occasions — and makes the next booking more likely. This is the self-reinforcing dynamic that underpins the asset's long-term value, and it is driven entirely by the quality of the place itself.
Ave Maria is a structurally contained market. The University is permanent. The town's identity is fixed. The demand that flows from those conditions — family visits, institutional gatherings, diocesan events, destination weddings — is not cyclical or discretionary. It recurs, year after year, on a largely predictable schedule. A property that captures this demand and holds it does not need to be repositioned, remarketed, or renovated to remain competitive. Its competitive position strengthens simply by continuing to be what it is.
The financial expression of this is an asset that performs more like an endowment than a hotel. Occupancy is anchored rather than chased. Pricing is held by setting rather than defended by discounting. And over a ten-year hold, the combination of growing NOI, a fixed debt balance declining through amortization, and an exit cap rate reflecting the asset's irreplaceable position in its market produces returns that are both strong and durable.