What took regulators so long? Immokalee?

We'll never know why it took so long for regulators to shut down long-suffering Florida Community Bank, but speculation among bankers was its unique headquarters location: Immokalee.

Even, the bank's chairman, president and chief executive officer, often derisively referred to the agricultural town in eastern Collier County as a migrant-labor camp.

He was planning to move the office to nearby Ave Maria, the new town founded by Domino's Pizza founder and Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan.

While other struggling banks such as Orion Bank in nearby Naples were acquired quickly in auctions held by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., no one wanted to be Immokalee.

In fact, Miami-based Premier American Bank only acquired about half the bank's $876 million in assets after it was shut down Jan. 29.

But Premier American acquired a lot of Collier history. Florida Community Bank was the oldest bank chartered in Southwest Florida, chartered in Everglades City
by the Collier family in 1923. The Price family has managed the bank since it led a group of local investors to buy it in 1963.