The Explosive Growth of Homestead, Florida

"Bob Epling drives down one of Homestead's main roads and points to row upon row of brand-new condos and town houses with peach walls, red-tile roofs, and juvenile trees held up by wooden stakes.

'This was all potatoes and corn,' he tells the visitor in his passenger seat. `If you came here three years ago, that would be all you'd see, as far as the eye can see.'

A few minutes later, he points out the Richards Tractor and Implements on Campbell Drive. A line of farm machinery is parked out front, but just down the street is a new multiplex and shopping center with a Chili's restaurant, Atlanta Bread Co., and a sushi shop.

'Our little town is changing,' says Epling, president of the Homestead-based Community Bank of Florida for the past three decades and a resident of the town for most of his life. `The face is changing. It's a community in transition.'"