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Changing landscape

The face of Wimauma is in transition. "Farm community" no longer sums up the diversity of people, jobs and businesses in this once-simple area.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published June 9, 2006

WIMAUMA - Along the strip of blacktop that runs through this town, Hispanic crew leaders stop to buy tamales at Primo's convenience store.

Residents walk to the Wimauma Supermarket, dodging cantaloupe trucks, to buy pinatas, boots, fresh meat and Spanish magazines.

These are images from old Wimauma, a place known as Little Mexico where farm workers lived amid clotheslines and loose roosters.

Down the road, new Wimauma rises out of the ground.

There, concrete slabs form walls of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter. Landscaped entrances welcome visitors into an upscale development called Valencia Lakes.

Change is barreling down on this unincorporated area from all sides, as farm land is churned into suburban yards and subdivisions.

Rumors swirl as residents fear they will be pushed out of the way.

Many, though, are already leaving by choice. Wimauma is undergoing a metamorphosis - one from within.

Instead of renting trailers, many residents now own homes. Children are moving away, attending college. Many families have left the fields and started their own businesses. Where they once picked fruit, they now make more money building luxury retirement homes for other people.

***

When William Cruz opened Good Samaritan Mission 22 years ago, he found migrant families living in the back of pickup trucks. Citrus and tomato fields beckoned migrant workers from Mexico.

Over the years, bodegas opened, and the face of Wimauma became Hispanic. Today about 70 percent of the area's estimated 5,500 residents are Hispanic.

But the jobs that brought these immigrants here are leaving as farms make way for development.

Upscale Valencia Lakes will stretch across 1,500 acres on Wimauma's west side in an age-restricted community offering half-million-dollar homes. Other developments with fewer homes, but price tags from the $300,000s, are under way.

Many of the families served by Cruz's mission on Balm-Wimauma Road are leaving to find work in counties to the south.

Others stay here to keep their children in school but drive farther to farm jobs in Manatee or Hardee counties.

Cruz said the growth and development could force the mission to close.

"I hate to say it, this will affect us," he said. "Maybe it could happen so that the mission needs to relocate out of the area because of the housing boom.''

At Beth-El Mission on U.S. 301, director Dave Moore says they have plans to open branches for farm workers in Immokalee and Wauchula.

"Ten years from now, there will be a very small presence of agriculture workers'' in Wimauma, he said.

That's exactly what people like Jorge Ahmad fear.

He runs Primo's convenience store on State Road 674, the main drag through Wimauma.

The new Wal-Mart going up at State Road 674 and U.S. 301 could put him out of business, he said.

"It's really scary,'' Ahmad said. "You'll probably see me working at Wal-Mart in a couple of years.''

***

On State Road 674, Maria Gomez, 52, and her mother help run Odds & Ends, a small storefront packed with used long-sleeved shirts popular with farm workers, racks of jeans, and shopping carts full of shoes.

For 25 years the family worked in the fields until they opened the store with one of Gomez's sons about two years ago. Gomez never let her own children do farm work, stressing education and professional careers.

Now she worries that Wal-Mart's low prices will put the store out of business.

And yet, leaving Wimauma wouldn't be the worst thing, she says. The gang problems worry her. She'd like to raise her younger children someplace else.

She owns a trailer and her mother, 75-year-old Mariana Gonzalez, owns a house she bought in the 1980s.

Gonzalez said if she could find a nice home on a peaceful lot near Balm, she would sell her house and move out of Wimauma.

"If we could find something with space, we'd do it,'' Gonzalez said.

***

Farmers say they're running out of room, too.

Jay Sizemore, one of the owners of Jay-Mar produce, said he would have considered moving farther inland, where land used to be less expensive.

"But I don't think that's the case anymore,'' he said. Now after farmers sell, it's too costly to start over somewhere else. "To me, it's an end of an era.''

The changes sadden Earl Stanaland, 80, a fourth-generation farmer in Hillsborough County.

His family sold its 1,360 acres to phosphate companies years ago, but he still leases and works a 100-acre field south of Wimauma.

"I'll try to get land somewhere else, but most of it's taken up,'' he said. "Yes, sirree ... It's heartbreaking to me.''

***

Growth isn't the only thing changing the face of Wimauma. Some Hispanics are leaving to attend college, and start a new life elsewhere.

Marta Rodriguez, 25, grew up in Wimauma in a farm working family, went to college and opened RDZ Insurance Group Inc. in Riverview.

Enrique Gallegos, who coaches for the Rural Youth Soccer Association, has a daughter studying forensic science at Michigan State University.

Francisca Vega, who got out of farm work more than a decade ago, recently opened her own business cleaning new homes. She and her siblings are building a house on the lot their parents bought years ago. By the time builders complete the seven-bedroom home, the lot and structure will be worth about $350,000.

Vega's 26-year-old daughter is rehabilitating her Wimauma home with her husband, a former farm worker who now runs his own construction business. When they're done, the couple want to sell and move closer to Tampa.

Even Vega is not sure she'll stay forever.

Maybe someday, she says, they could sell the home for a big profit and move to a quieter neighborhood.

Saundra Amrhein can be reached at (813) 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 8, 2006, 13:14:35]