Deliverance

"We are the nearest community. It's a golden opportunity for Immokalee," says the chamber's Starling. "A giant boost."

But so far, the messiah has been quiet.

Immokalee is not listed on the college Web site and is rarely mentioned in press releases about the university scheduled to open in 2006. (A temporary campus is already operating in the Vineyards in Naples, with classes for adults and college students scheduled to be underway this fall.) Although it will be operating from Immokalee's rural back yard, the university has clearly identified itself with Naples, more than 25 miles away on the coast. "A lot of people are concerned about that," says Starling, who is cautious about saying much more. "It would be very nice to see our name too."

The slight is not personal, says Ave Maria president Nicholas J. Healy Jr. It's geography: "Well, Naples is what the people up North know. It's a better way of describing where we are. It's a better frame of reference for us because, really, no one outside of Southwest Florida knows where Immokalee is."

The outside world, however, has heard of Immokalee, first from journalist Edward R. Murrow, whose 1960 Harvest of Shame television documentary on migrant farmworker abuse shocked the nation. Recent headlines have portrayed Immokalee as a place where slavery still exists (three farmworker slavery rings have been busted in the past five years), a place where hunger strikes and other protests over farmworker pay and conditions have been born. An April New Yorker article about the community included a passage about a decapitated dog lying in Main Street for days.

I-75 billboards proclaim Immokalee as merely a Seminole gambling casino, on the reservation, near the stockade, next to Nancy's cigarette shop on the edge of town.

Abuse, slavery, headless dogs, gambling? Not the first choice for a neighbor. But, hey, the land was free.

"Just by mentioning the name Immokalee, Ave Maria could work wonders for this community," says Carlene Thissen, who last year published the book Immokalee's Fields of Hope, which weaves her personal story and immigrant interviews around the histories of Immokalee and its cultures. "The university should be proud of any relationship with this wonderful place."

Healy's words indicate the ball may be in Immokalee's court: "In one sense, a university is autonomous in a town that supports it. We develop the educational institution and the town provides the support. That's how it usually works."

But this time the university is bringing along its own town. Plans for the new city of Ave Maria include shops, stores, recreation and entertainment facilities and restaurants-including the world's largest Domino's Pizza, Monaghan promises. Ave Maria will be a self-contained burg surviving without want in the Florida outback; there will be little reason for anyone to visit or spend money in Immokalee.

"Look at the Seminole casino. It brings a lot of people to Immokalee. But they go into the casino and leave. The gamblers don't come here for anything else. There is not a large economic boost there. Actually, people from Immokalee give them business," says Thomas. Restaurateur Art Lozzano owns eight acres between the casino and the Ave Maria site. He plans modern apartments and another restaurant. "It will specialize in sandwiches," he says. "That's what students want-sandwiches." Lozzano is rare, however.

"The business folks have not expanded the retail mentality. They cater to the farmworker still. They have not learned to be 'Anglo friendly,'" says Thomas.

Students will certainly come to Immokalee to perform required "acts of mercy," says Healy, who promises that Ave Maria will supplement ongoing Catholic charities' work. "Our students will learn from the people in Immokalee."

Healy admits students won't drive over for a dance and a Coke-but the president predicts economic fortune will bless the community in the form of new business, new industry: "The synergy of the cultural, economic, social and religious can't help but affect Immokalee. The proximity of a dynamic new university will open up a vast number of opportunities. I can see industries locating near the airport in the future. There is a certain synergy created."

Starling is supervising a compilation of everything Immokalee has to offer Ave Maria, from cheaper building materials to some of the best ethnic food in Florida. He will present it to Monaghan and university leaders at a ranch hoedown for Ave Maria brass in early October. "We want to make sure they don't come back at us one day and say, 'We didn't know Immokalee had that,'" he says.

No one in this part of the world has a more difficult job than Starling, who must extol Immokalee's virtues to the skeptics in Collier County (much less the rest of the world) from his tiny office in the back of B-Hive's Flower Shop. When asked to list the stops on a proposed guided tour of the city, Starling does not hesitate.

He begins at the voluptuous downtown market, "where you can get any vegetable you want, fresh" and moves to the Blueberry Farm, where Harvest for Humanity founder Dick Nogaj allows farmworkers to invest in his crops (pumping profits into the Jubilation complex). Next is the University of Florida IFAS Center "where pesticides and fertilizers are tested," Lake Trafford, "largest lake south of Lake Okeechobee," the pioneer Roberts Ranch Museum, the airport ("a training facility for World War II pilots, now the center of our free-enterprise zone. We can import and export across the globe") and the Seminole Reservation/Casino.

As Starling gets going on Immokalee's virtues, one can't help but envision his agenda. Even if Ave Maria doesn't prove to be a messiah, Starling suggests that "unique" Immokalee can do it on its own. Ecotours, Starling is convinced, "could be a gold mine around here." A stone's throw from Immokalee are the largest remaining strands of bald cypress in Florida, and most of the Florida panthers left on earth. Government and privately preserved wilderness is everywhere. "I used to doubt that someone would pay $800 to ride a swamp buggy all day, until I went out to Alaska and paid $800 to ride in a dog sled," he says. "It sounds crazy now, but when I was there I wanted to ride a dog sled. People will do the same thing to ride through a swamp, I can guarantee you that."

Starling's ultimate dream is a downtown that looks, sounds and feels like Immokalee's many ethnic groups. "We have the people. The culture is already here," he says. "We need to design and market it properly. I've talked to all the groups and they are all on board. Except the Guatemalans. No real leader has emerged among the Guatemalans to talk with yet.

"Don't get me wrong. Immokalee will always have farmworkers. This is what Immokalee is all about. Agriculture. This will always be a proud farming town. We are not looking to be a cosmopolitan city where everything looks alike and there are three palm trees on every corner. But there is no reason we can't expand to other industries, create more jobs.

"Down in Everglades City, they want their piece of bread and then just want to be left alone. Here, we want the whole loaf."

Back at the downtown Los Gators watering hole, Raiford Starke cools off next to a sign that reads "Million Dollar Log." A large chunk of petrified wood, it had been Immokalee's only real tourist attraction for years-a place where locals sat and talked about what they'd do if they had a million bucks. (The previous owner removed the log and took it to a campground in Palmdale several years ago.)

"Jeez, I'm kind of bummed that Benny [Starling] didn't mention me," says guitar slinger Starke, whose song "Girl from Immokalee" is on juke boxes all over Florida. Starke takes no offense, though. He pushes back the brim of his crushed store-bought cowboy hat: "I love this town. This is real Florida. I'll do anything I can for these people. Wait'll that new college comes in. Tell Benny I've got a great song I'm working on about Catholic girls!"