Faith and Opportunity

Moving to Ave Maria will help recruit quality personnel, he says. "The [employees] we’re trying to attract—the kind of management-level folks you need at a billion-dollar bank—there’s not much for them in Immokalee. To us, it’s our home, but to them it’s not aesthetically pleasing." Whatever their faith or denomination, he adds, "they see Ave Maria, a university town, as very attractive."

It’s unlikely that Ave Maria will transform the business character of Immokalee, Price says. "Ave Maria’s not going to merge into Immokalee, but I don’t think people understand yet what the impact will be: jobs, educational opportunities, and just the social work. Typically when you have a religious college, you have a socially conscious group of people at a young and impressionable age, and they’re going to make things right."

They’re not the only ones. Rush has already spent significant time in Immokalee, connecting with the Catholic church there and planning ways to help local women.

Moving and opening a shop in a newly minted town in Florida from an established home and business community in the Midwest carries risks, Rush acknowledges, and she had to push back her plans due to construction and permitting delays. But her optimism is high.

"I think, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? I have options. I could sell up here, I could close down there.’ A lot of times the most valuable things come from the biggest risks," she says. "This is a project with such magnitude, and sometimes there are things more important in life than the bottom line."