Gulfshore Neighborhoods

Everglades City becomes the center of the seafood universe each February with the annual Everglades Seafood Festival, featuring live music, rides, attractions and, you guessed it, seafood. Other nearby attractions include the Gulf Coast welcome center to Everglades National Park, the 11-mile Jane's Memorial Scenic Drive in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve (home of the elusive ghost orchid) and Ochopee, where Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher hangs his shingle and displays his famous black-and-whites.

Everglades City and its surrounding environs-Pleasure Island, Plantation Island, Copeland and Chokoloskee Island (a pioneer trading post and home to the historic Ted Smallwood's store) feature a variety of residential offerings-sportsmen's cabins and condos right on the water, million-dollar estates, Barron Collier-era cottages, mobile homes and vacant lots. Prices range from nearly $200,000 to more than $1 million.

GOLDEN GATE CITY

Swing sets in the back yard, basketball hoops in the driveway and public facilities that offer an auditorium, gymnasium, aquatics center and fitness center are testament to this unofficial city's appeal to families. Homes, even those on one of the area's many canals, are still considered affordable here. As a result, Golden Gate City is becoming a great melting pot, attracting newcomers from Miami and other Southeast Florida venues, as well as first-time Collier County residents.

The conveniences of a full-fledged city are also offered here-mom-and-pop businesses, national chain supermarkets and restaurants, a public library and the tax collector. The Golden Gate Community Center has an auditorium, game and meeting rooms, a woodshop, kitchen and gymnasium. The county-run Golden Gate Community Park hosts children's sports teams and pick-up games and offers several lighted softball, baseball and Little League fields, a lighted soccer/football field and lighted tennis and racquetball courts. It is home to the Golden Gate Aquatic Complex, featuring several heated pools, a 110-foot water slide and a fully equipped fitness center. Small condos, nestled along the fairways of the public golf course, start in the mid-$100,000s; single-family homes range from around $200,000 to about $500,000.

GOLDEN GATE ESTATES

A rambling address of roughly 43,000 acres, Golden Gate Estates is Collier County's largest neighborhood, sweeping south from Immokalee Road to Alligator Alley and east-to-west from DeSoto Boulevard to I-75. Its largeness makes owning a large tract of land possible, which appeals to former suburbanites and young families looking for room to spread out.

Early Estates residents tamed swampland into canal-front lots and carved out the Estates' original five-acre wooded tracts, many of which have now been subdivided to 1.25-acre lots. Still, buyers find enough property to own horses and build sprawling homesteads. The absence of homeowner associations means no annual fees and no one dictating architectural requirements, says Bruce Farrell, a real estate agent with Century 21 and the self-proclaimed Estates King. "People who move to the Estates want to get away from having a neighbor right in their back yard," he says. The price spread of homes here is across the board-anywhere from $300,000 for older homes with a more eastern address to more than $2 million.

IMMOKALEE

Census statistics cast a revealing picture of Immokalee, a rural farm town where the majority of residents are Hispanic (71 percent), male (56.4 percent) and have a median age of 24.7 years. Settled in 1873 by hunters, trappers, traders and ranchers, Immokalee is the birthplace of Arizona Cardinals running back Edgerrin James. This unincorporated town is facing a renaissance, thanks to the arrival of a university and a new town 10 miles away, and growing attention to the plight and substandard housing faced by migrant field workers.

Much of Immokalee's retail and commercial base, including restaurants serving authentic Mexican cuisine and groceries, caters to the needs of the migrant workers and local farmers, and is found along Main Street and its side streets. The Seminole Casino is located on First Street, and the 599-acre Immokalee Seminole Reservation, created in the 1980s, is located on the outskirts of town, as is Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

Ave Maria University's permanent campus and the town of Ave Maria, both the brainchild of Domino's Pizza founder and former Detroit Tigers owner Thomas Monaghan, are set to debut this year. The 5,000-acre project marks the first new major Catholic university in the country in the past 40 years, and the town is the first-ever modern municipality developed in conjunction with a university. It will offer 11,000 homes in a variety of styles (including designated affordable housing units), a European-inspired town center, La Piazza, schools, parks and public facilities. The 100-foot tall Oratory will serve as the visual heart of the university, and given Florida's flat landscape, will likely be seen miles away.

ISLES OF CAPRI

This chain of islands becomes stone crab central from mid-October to mid-May, Florida's season for the succulent crustacean. Many Naples area restaurants and crab connoisseurs buy the claws right off the boat at Capri Fisheries on Kon Tiki Drive. Located two miles north of Marco Island, Isles of Capri was developed by Tennessean Leland L. "Doc" Loach, whose vision of an island hideaway came true when he purchased the 600-acre mangrove islands in 1955. Loach dredged canals, built a water plant, linked each island with land bridges and carved commercial and residential properties into the wilderness. Civilization seems far-flung; other than the Marco skyline seen from the southernmost island, Isles of Capri is surrounded by undeveloped mangrove islands, part of the Ten Thousand Islands chain.

Island homes include new and older condos, Old Florida fishing cottages and newer mansions. Most homes sit on the water, either canals or fingers of Johnson and Tarpon bays and Big Marco Pass. Boating and fishing are popular pastimes, evident by four on-island marinas and several restaurants that offer docks and tiki huts. The island chain also has two convenience stores, a community center and a fully staffed fire and rescue department.

MARCO ISLAND

Top the Jolly Bridge linking Marco Island to the mainland, and you're likely to marvel at this 14-plus-square-mile island. From this vantage point homes seem flush with the surrounding water and the view carries west for miles. At street level however, Marco welcomes with all of the tropical magic that attracted the first population explosion in the 1960s-well-manicured landscaping and tropical homes set against canals, the Gulf and the city's various inland waterways. Water brought the first settlers to the largest of the Ten Thousand Islands in the 1870s and continues to attract today's new residents-mainly part- and full-time buyers who want a boat in the back yard and a carefree island lifestyle without sacrificing convenience and amenities-top shopping, restaurants and on-island healthcare.

Marco Island's earliest settlers were the Calusa Indians, whose hand-carved works, including the most famous-the six-inch wooden Key Marco Cat-have been uncovered during archeological digs. The presence of these primitive people is still felt in Marco's Caxambas section at the south end of the island, where a 50-foot shell mound creates the county's highest point above sea level. It's now home to the Estates and Marco's highest concentration of multimillion-dollar single-family homes. As recently as the late 1800s, Marco was merely a point on the map. The island wasn't really inhabited until after the Civil War and the arrival in the 1870s of homesteader William Thomas Collier (no relation to county patriarch Barron Gift Collier). Collier is credited with founding Old Marco village, located at the north end. His sprawling home site operates today as the Olde Marco Inn, and several Collier-era structures still stand.

Marco Island has six miles of beaches, six city parks, designated biking trails, upscale shopping and dining at the waterfront Esplanade, and a number of well-regarded spas and restaurants in resorts dotting the Gulf of Mexico, including the four-diamond Marco Beach Ocean Resort. Marco is a city, voter approved in August 1997, and by best guesses is expected to reach build-out around 2010. About 300 new homes are built each year.

Sixty percent of Marco Island's homes are on the water-the Marco River, the Gulf, canals and surrounding bays and estuaries. Offerings include multimillion-dollar estate homes, efficiency condos starting in the mid- to high-$100,000s, time-shares and decent single-family homes, priced, on average, at about $600,000. Most are within walking or biking distance of Marco's beaches. Tigertail Beach, on the island's north end, offers five boardwalks, a bathhouse, concessions, beach rentals, volleyball and views of Sand Dollar Island, which has the largest concentration of shorebirds in South Florida. Resident's Beach, at the intersection of Collier Boulevard and San Marco Road, has chickee-hut-shaded picnic tables, restrooms and a children's play area, and South Marco Beach is found on Collier Boulevard. Other public facilities include the Collier County Racquet Center, Frank E. Mackle Jr. Community Park and Caxambas Park.

Goodland

Travel east along San Marco Road and momentarily leave civilization behind. The road's nothingness eventually arrives at this tiny fishing village, a handful of crisscrossing streets surrounded by Goodland and Gullivan bays and Coon Key Pass and home to just 200 residents. Isolated from the mainland until the completion of a swing bridge and San Marco Road, built using shells from nearby shell mounds in the late 1930s, Goodland's potential for real estate has only recently been discovered. Condos are now part of the existing housing mix, mostly Old Florida homes that sell from the high $300,000s to more than $1 million-a contrast to the town's 1949 inhabitation by squatters, whom developers relocated from Marco's Caxambas neighborhood.

Goodland's population swells each Sunday afternoon when in-the-know visitors and residents flock to Stan's Idle Hour Seafood Restaurant. Nearly 5,000 people converge on Goodland each January for Stan's three-day Mullet Festival, celebrating the fish, not the 1980s hairstyle. Fried and smoked mullet are on the menu, and Stan's crowns a Buzzard Lope Queen and Princess. (Owner Stan Gober wrote The Buzzard Lope Song).

NAPLES

Naples is known internationally as a favorite winter retreat for celebrities and others in the rich-and-famous set. With its world-famous beaches, cosmopolitan shopping and dining along Fifth Avenue South, Third Street South and the newly renovated, designer-studded Waterside Shops, gracious beachfront homes and venue for the country's premier wine festival each January, Naples' star is on the rise. National media coverage of ritzy real estate never fails to mention this city by the sea. Naples has some of the most enviable addresses in the country, and it's no wonder that those who live on the outskirts (the official boundaries incorporate just 12 square miles) consider themselves Neapolitans. Its mix of neighborhoods and homes-from gated country club communities to beachfront mansions and historic beach cottages to luxury condo communities-add to its charm. So does its rating in 2005 as the No. 1 Small Art Town in America, a credit to Naples' offering of galleries, arts fairs, art centers, theaters and the Philharmonic Center.

Most of Greater Naples' three-dozen or so gated communities have been developed along the area's major roads-Immokalee Road, Airport-Pulling Road, Tamiami Trail, Goodlette-Frank Road and Livingston Road. Their arrival along less developed stretches of road often signal the next hot growth spot, with shopping centers, restaurants and office parks popping up soon after. The completion of the Livingston Road extension created a major north-south link between south Naples and Lee County, and now boasts the newly opened North Collier Regional Park, featuring a 6,000-square-foot RecPlex facility with state-of-the-art fitness center, walking trails, a boardwalk spanning a wetland preserve and the Sun-n-Fun Lagoon water park.

Areas of Livingston Road and Vanderbilt Beach Road near I-75 are home to several equestrian estates and riding schools. Five-acre tracts provide ample room for barns and riding arenas in Livingston Woods, offering just under 400 single-family lots, large enough for horses, homes and guest homes. The neighborhood features a nice mix of Old Florida-style homes with front porches and widow's walks and Mediterranean estates on lots typically one to two acres. It's also close to the Community School, Barron Collier High School, shops and restaurants. The northern sweep of Livingston includes several gated communities: Tuscany Reserve, Mediterra, Delasol and Milano.