$220-Million to Build College Pledged by Pizza Entrepreneur

Thomas S. Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza, announced last week that he and his Ave Maria Foundation have pledged $220-million to create a Catholic university near Naples, Fla., and an additional $18-million for an interim campus. He said he and other investors would also spend $100-million to help build a town near the campus. The gift is among the 15 largest gifts to higher education, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mr. Monaghan is the founder and chairman of the Ave Maria Foundation, in Ann Arbor, Mich., which has $252.3-million in assets. He sold all but a 7-percent stake in Domino’s Pizza for $1-billion in 1998 and gave $250-million of it to his foundation. In 1999, he said that he planned to give the majority of his wealth away within two decades (The Chronicle, October 7, 1999).

The new institution, Ave Maria University, will occupy a 750-acre campus about 15 miles east of Naples. The land was donated by the Barron Collier Companies, a southwest Florida real-estate and agricultural company. Mr. Monaghan and the Barron Collier Companies have also formed a business partnership that will spend $100-million developing a new town on 5,000 acres adjacent to the campus.

The university is expected to open on a temporary campus next fall, with the main campus completed by 2005 or 2006. It has a goal of eventually serving 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students. It is an outgrowth of Ave Maria College, in Ypsilanti, Mich., which Mr. Monaghan started in 1998 with a donation of $25-million. That college will eventually close and its students will be encouraged to transfer to the university.

The new campus will include a top-notch golf course that Mr. Monaghan hopes will become the “Catholic Augusta National,” with a national membership that would also provide charitable support to the university. He also hopes to build an athletic program.

“We want to have a big-name sports program as soon as we can, if it’s feasible, but we want it to be a very honest program,” says Mr. Monaghan, a former owner of the Detroit Tigers. “It helps put you on the map, helps with esprit de corps with the students, faculty, and alumni, and it is very important to fund raising.”

Mr. Monaghan plans to raise funds from other donors but did not say how much he would seek.

Mr. Monaghan, a Roman Catholic, had previously pledged $50-million to create the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, which opened in 2000 with a goal of infusing the moral and religious teachings of the Catholic Church into legal education. He has also helped create other Catholic philanthropic ventures, including the Thomas More Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit legal organization that defends religious rights.