Saving Bank of Everglades

It was the roaring 20s when Barron Collier, namesake of Collier County, built the iconic Bank of Everglades building in 1926. The bank, chartered in 1923, remained the county’s only bank until 1949. After moving to Immokalee in 1962, Bank of Everglades became the First Bank of Immokalee.

According to the Collier County Historic and Archaeological Preservation Board, “The bank’s depositors included rum runners, alligator poachers, fur and feather traders, and legendary pioneers.” 

Over the years the Bank of Everglades has housed businesses as diverse as a boarding house, the Everglades Echo, Everglades City's newspaper at the time, to a popular bed and breakfast. Patty Huff, president of the Everglades Society of Historical Preservation, has led the charge to restore the landmark building. The bank received a $3 million grant this year as part of President Biden’s 2023 Omnibus Spending Bill. 

"In 1996, Bob Flick and his daughter Patty opened it as a bed and breakfast,” Huff said. “She was the one that had it listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. It's going to be a focal point of Everglades City and we hope of Collier County, where people can come and enjoy and relax. We'll have local art exhibits and traveling art exhibits. We'll have a historical library and study area where the public can come and use the conference room. We'll have a small arts and crafts type of little room where people can gather. We'll have a full-time office manager. Downstairs will be basically a reception area, which includes a lot of brochures and information about all the businesses and the facilities and the recreational opportunities throughout the Everglades. We'll have our gift shop, which is just local artists. We try to highlight just our locals and our winter residents. We anticipate it will be completed within two years; it will probably be done by the summer of 2025. 

“When the Flicks had it, it was a very successful bed and breakfast,” Huff said, "but then over the years they transferred the leasing of it to a couple here in town, they also had it as a bed and breakfast. And then after Wilma, they left and then Patty Bowen over at the Rod and Gun Club ran it as a bed and breakfast until 2017, and that's when Irma hit. So, for almost 20 years, it was a great place to go for a massage, spa facials, and then also just being a bed and breakfast. Bob tried to fix it up for years and he tried to do it himself, but he was in his late 80s. He was trying to take down the walls himself. He was trying to fix all the plumbing. It just got to be too much. And I had known him since the 1990s when they bought the building. We used to play tennis together with a tennis group around here. So, I knew Bob and I just went over to help him sometimes and keep in touch with them. And then finally he thought it would be a good idea to donate it to the Everglades Society for Historic Preservation (ESHP) for us to try to find the funding to fix it up. And that's what we've been doing since 2021.

“We knew we would need to have grant funding in order to really get this accomplished,” Huff said, "because we were getting estimates, people were saying between $2 and $5 million to fix it. So, we applied for state funding, private funding through different organizations throughout the country that provide private grants. Then we finally applied through congressman Mario Diaz-Balart's office for appropriation funds through the federal government. And that was where we got $3 million. And so now we have realized that it's going to cost close to $5 million. So, we're asking now for another $1.55 million from the state from an appropriations bill for next year. There's a lot of things going on with the state. We feel like we've got the support of a lot of people. I mean, we've gotten the city council support, the mayor, support businesses, support from the national parks. We have lots of letters of recommendation from the county museums and from the Naples Historical Society, the Marco Historical Society, the Bonita Springs Historical Society. So, we know we've got the support behind us. But, you know, it has to go through the process of the state. But we did get a smaller matching grant of $53,000 from the Division of Historic Resources in Tallahassee. We had to match it with $53,000. And all of that money, it's $100,000, is going to go for the historically correct windows that we're going to bring back.”

Of course, any building is just as good as its foundation.

“Definitely,” Huff said. "The first thing we have to do is the foundation. The foundation does need repairs. So, we had a structural engineer here last week with the architect and they went under the building. And we've also had lots of engineering reports on the foundation.”

While the bank building doesn’t look so great cosmetically, Huff said it’s gotten a good bill of health structurally.

“Structurally,” Huff said, "they said it is solid. It is so good. It's just the foundation. There are some weak pilings that have to be fixed. We've talked about even raising it up, but our architect's really working on it. He’s hoping that we can just go in and repair it. We may have to pull up some of the floors to do it. And some of the floors need to be redone, but we'll definitely keep the wood floors." 

One reason for the bank’s seemingly high price tag is due to the fact the building is being restored, not simply renovated. When the building’s integrity was being assessed, it was discovered that the building was full of Cypress and Dade County Pine.

“The strength of this building,” Huff said, "I mean, it's just so solid. And you've got the beautiful Dade County Pine back here,” Huff said, pointing to wood behind an inspection port. “When they put the roof on, they didn't have to replace but like 17 linear feet of the boards on the roofing trusses. They said, ‘Don't ever let anyone tell you have to replace that wood because it's in such great shape. They said it's in better shape than any roofing they've ever done in an historic building."

While Huff, 77, admits the restoration of the Bank of Everglades is a dream come true for her, she’s quick to point out that she hasn’t done it alone. Huff is one of the founding members of the ESHP. 

"I just admire Barron Collier so much,” Huff said. "And I love the fact of what he did for this town. And it saddens me that we've let so much of it go and we're all at fault for this.”

But thanks to Huff and her cohorts at the ESHP, Barron Collier’s bank building is being spared from the wrecking ball.

"Yeah, it is a dream come true,” Huff said. "But it's not just me. I mean, the thing is the whole community is behind us on this. I don't want people to think it's just me. I want people to realize it's our board—the whole community is really supporting this. And they've done it with so much of their help and donations and in-kind services. The community is behind us. They are all very excited about it. They've donated money, they donate their time, they donate their materials. It's just been wonderful."

Huff feels Barron Collier deserves to have his bank taken care of.

“We feel like we really are stewards of this place,” Huff said, "and we really have to honor Barron Collier to bring it back to what his vision was for this community. Because his vision was this was to be, you know, a wonderful, self-supporting community. Barron Collier wanted Everglades City to be a real town. And when this becomes our visitor center and an art gallery, which we don't really have, it's really going to be fantastic. I think it's going to be good for the whole county, not just Everglades City, and for all the visitors who come here. We'll have a wonderful grand opening, inviting everybody."