A Fount of Youth in Florida

It’s been hours since the last early-bird specials of grilled chicken penne and bamboo steamed salmon were dished up at Zoe’s. Midnight on Florida’s Gulf Coast is approaching and, like Cinderella’s coach, this city is undergoing a fast transformation.

The tribute band that played on a downtown street corner is gone, as are the silver-haired strollers the musicians cajoled into gyrating to “Twist and Shout.” Now, 5th Avenue South belongs mostly to the young: teens, people in their 20s and 30s, here to mingle and party.

At one outdoor bar, Ronan O’Malley, 21, sips a rum and cola. Naples, insists O’Malley, isn’t just for Grandma and Grandpa anymore.

“You’ve got the beach a block away, plus good bars,” says the Irish-born cook. “It’s paradise.”

Since the late 1960s, Naples has been a retirement destination of choice for the well-heeled and golf-mad, a mostly Republican, largely Midwestern and well-behaved retreat on Florida’s southwestern coast. With seven miles of white, sandy beaches and more than 100 golf courses, the city has also provided a discreet and sunny pied-a-terre for well-known snowbirds like sports greats Larry Byrd and Mike Ditka, author Robin Cook and television’s Judge Judy.

“We used to be a mecca for retired golf-crazy senior citizens, let me put it that way,” Mayor Bill Barnett said. “And the golf-crazy are still here. But more and more, young attorneys, real estate agents, engineers, you name it -- they’re here too.”

In fact, the most recent U.S. census found that this city of 21,000 and surrounding Collier County have been acquiring young, single, college-educated residents at a faster clip than any other part of the United States. What’s more, from 1990 to 2000, the overall population of the Naples area grew by 65%, to just over a quarter of a million people, a frenetic rate bested only by Las Vegas.

“The image of Naples, and Florida, as one giant retirement community is out,” said Roger Weatherburn-Baker, who owns a local art gallery specializing in contemporary painters and sculptors. “Young people are attracted to vacation here, and they are even more attracted to move here. Once, they may have sold the home their parents retired to. Now, they may move in.”

In an important way, this municipality is representative of Florida as a whole: It has become a lodestone for Americans who have decided to pull up stakes and try life elsewhere. The Sunshine State, which had only about half a million residents a century ago, is now home to more than 17 million, and gains more through migration than any other state.

In the 12 months ending last July, and not counting the increase in population due to births, Florida added an estimated 355,000 residents, nearly the equivalent of the population of Miami. If migratory trends continue, Florida, which surpassed Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois in the 1980s to become the fourth most populous state in the nation, should reach another milestone in 15 years or so, when it overtakes New York. Only California and Texas will have more people.

“The largest number of people moving to Florida are in their 20s and 30s,” said Stan Smith, director of the Bureau of Economics and Business Research at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “It’s because these people are just starting out.”

One of the most tempting lures for the young is employment -- from jobs in companies catering to the needs of well-to-do seasonal residents and retirees to new ventures based in and around Naples that have won national, even international, clients and reputations.

Employment enticed Gianna Vivo, 26, three years ago from up north. Now in her second job, as marketing project manager for ASG, a Naples-based software company with customers worldwide, Vivo has done well enough to buy a three-bedroom house. “I don’t think I could have had this quality of life if I’d stayed in New York or Chicago,” said Vivo, who is originally from Youngstown, Ohio.

The balmy weather, naturally, is also a powerful magnet. The sun shines on Naples more than 330 days a year, and temperatures average 75 degrees, though summers can be downright steamy with monsoon-like cloudbursts each day.

As far back as the late 1800s, this seaside locale was being touted as every bit as sun-blessed and beautiful as its namesake in southern Italy.

America’s Naples also benefited from hunting lodges, a fishing industry and the word that spread among the nation’s elite and affluent about its being a fine place to spend the coldest months of the year.

According to local historians, the Naples Hotel played host during the first half of the 20th century to such luminaries as Thomas Edison, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr and Gary Cooper. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, had a retreat a little farther up the coast, on Sanibel Island, and would come to Naples to pick up supplies.

Retirees began streaming here in the late 1970s, when waterfront lots in posh developments like Port Royal sold for $40,000 (today they may fetch $7 million).

According to some estimates, Naples became home to more retired CEOs than any other place in the country.

Younger people began coming at the same time, to build houses, pump gasoline and provide other services for the elderly and wealthy. Every upscale gated community such as the Estuary at Grey Oaks or Fiddlers Creek meant jobs for landscape engineers, clubhouse food and beverage managers, fitness trainers, golf and tennis instructors.

Over the years, the colony of retirees and snowbirds also attracted a small army of bankers, financial advisors, stockbrokers and other professionals eager to manage their money. By mid-2002, deposits in Naples-area banks had reached $5.8 billion, a 70% increase in five years.

“Collier County got to a point where the consumers outnumbered the producers. Now the producers have caught up, and the producers tend to be young people,” said Bill Schiller, communications manager for the Naples Area Chamber of Commerce.

But many of the opportunities these days have little or nothing to do with meeting the demands of older folks or the multimillionaires who may live here only a few weeks a year. Entrepreneurs, many relatively young themselves, have been moving to Naples and its environs to launch companies in telecommunications, computer software, marketing and other fields.

Joseph Buckheit, 33, a graduate of Naples High School, jokes that he returned home from New York City in 1996 after catching himself pushing old ladies out of the way when he was late to work. MediaBrains, a company Buckheit founded to track the effectiveness of magazine advertising, now has 35 employees, many of them young single transplants.

“They’re saying, ‘I don’t want to retire here. I want to live here now,’ ” Buckheit said. “If you’re into outdoor life -- fishing, windsurfing, boating -- we live in a beautiful place.”

The half-dozen blocks of 5th Avenue South in the heart of Naples best show how this city has changed. Some residents can remember when, in the late ‘90s, the swanky shopping thoroughfare had one solitary bistro that stayed open past 9:30 p.m. Now there is Yabba Island Grill, Pazzo!, Viva on Fifth, Paddy Murphy’s Irish Pub, Zoe’s and a host of other night spots.

“A lot of people don’t go down there for dinner -- it’s too expensive,” said Gina Danesi, a 32-year-old from Carlisle, Pa., who works at MediaBrains.

“Go at 9, and all you may see is retired people and families having dinner. By 12 or so, the bars and restaurants start to change. They push the tables away so there can be dancing.”

Because of the dizzying population increase, Naples for the last four years has been the most expensive place in Florida to buy a home. Existing single-family houses sold for an average of $297,000 by the end of 2003, a 13% increase in one year, according to the Florida Board of Realtors.

However, despite the infusion of young blood, the average age in Collier County remains relatively high, at 44.

“When I first moved here, I used to joke that if you didn’t have a walker and an oxygen tank, you didn’t fit in,” said Vivo. The cohort of young singles may be quickly expanding, but it remains relatively small. And so, though Vivo likes the career opportunities and climate, the Ohio native has decided she will probably not be spending the rest of her life here.

“It’s a great place, but not a great place to be single,” Vivo said. “Most of the guys I meet are older, and first want to talk about how much money they make.”

For Lynne Adams, the rising number of single professionals in the Naples area is not just a social phenomenon; it’s a business opportunity. She recently purchased the local franchise for It’s Just Lunch, a San Diego-based dating service. For $1,395, she will set a client up on 14 lunch dates. She calls Naples a “gold mine.”

“There are at least 30 people moving every day into Collier County,” said Adams.

“Ninety percent have college degrees; 75% have advanced degrees. We have doctors, lawyers, highly educated people, lots of entrepreneurs who come to Naples to open their own restaurant, their own design firm.”

In a different vein, First Baptist Church Naples, a religious and educational complex built on what was once 100 acres of orange grove, has also studied population trends, and it now assigns a member of the clergy to minister to singles full time.

The church tries to provide young people with a place to get together, for coed volleyball or a get-acquainted evening with singles from other churches.

“We provide a special Bible study group for people 25 to 35, on topics like dating and finding the love of your life,” Associate Pastor Forrest E. Head said. “South Florida seems to have this reputation that it is a promised land where you can start again, and we have a surprising number of people in that group who’ve been married and divorced, so we also have a big divorce-recovery program.”

Danesi, a single woman who has lived here since she was 17, loves coming to work in T-shirt and jeans, boating on the Gulf and attending pool parties or barbecues organized by friends. The best thing about life Neapolitan style, she said, is that she can loll on the beach during daytime, then dine at a fine restaurant, take in a concert at “the Phil” (the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts) or go dancing at the South Beach-style club that opened in nearby Bonita Springs.

“People move here because an aunt, an uncle, whatever, has a condo here,” said Danesi, who followed an uncle to Naples after graduating from high school. “They end up liking it and staying.”