American Visionaries

Educators and entreprenuers alike go searching for a pot of gold to finance their dream schools.

By Lonnie Harp

Mesa, Ariz.

When he looks at the empty space in the Sunvalley Plaza, between the denture lab and the doll store, David Gordon sees a high school.

"To me, it looks like a great open campus," he says, thinking of his future students wandering among the bookstore and the movie theaters down the sidewalk. "There are a lot of places kids could go for breaks. And the landlord is willing to renovate."

He is not deterred by the vacant storefront that says America's Music Dinner Theater couldn't make a go of it. Nor is he dissuaded by the notion that, in a struggling shopping center on the outskirts of Mesa, $4,000 per student may not buy more for him than it does...