The Marvelous Mackle Brothers

by Garland Pollard

In the 1950s and 60s, the state of Florida was exploding, and the Episcopal Church was struggling to keep up.

Bishop Henry I. Louttit, in his 38th annual convention address on May 17, 1960 to the Diocese of South Florida, stressed the need to acquire new lands for the new churches, but there were few funds available, with literally thousands moving to Florida every day.

“Your trustees, of course, should be buying land now in areas that are to have housing developments in the future, or even in areas now being developed for future church use,” Louttit said to a convention gathered at Miami Municipal Auditorium. “For this purpose, we have at the moment most insufficient funds.”

By 1968, the convention wish had not only been answered, but was part of the marketing for Marco Island, the home of our under-construction southernmost church, St. Mark’s. In a promotional film, retired NBC Tonight Show host Jack Paar spoke eloquently about the features of Marco Island. To lure the wealthy to come to Marco Island, the first church would be a most respectable one.

“The Episcopal Church is the first of several houses of worship planned for construction on land donated by the Mackle Brothers,” said Paar in the travelogue, while jazz music played in the background. “Nothing has been overlooked in the planning of this community.” Paar, in between shots of comedian Jackie Gleason and golfer Gene Sarazen (later buried on Marco Island), extolled the effort to create a multi-generational community on what was one of the last unspoiled islands of Florida. “Not just old people,” Paar noted, “but a swinging place that I am sure you would enjoy.” This all thanks to the Mackle Brothers, of the Mackle Company, Inc.

There would be no bigger donor of properties to the diocese than the Mackle Brothers, sometimes known as Florida’s Famous Mackle Brothers, namely Frank Jr, Elliott and Robert Mackle. The Mackle Brothers were the sons of an English immigrant who in 1908 began building houses in Jacksonville. Thanks to the donations, the Diocese of Southwest Florida has four churches in Mackle developments. They are St. James Port Charlotte (1962), St. Nathaniel North Port (1963), St. Mark, Marco Island (1967) and St. Andrew Spring Hill (1971).

The most famous development of the Mackles was Key Biscayne, site of the post-election meeting of Kennedy and Nixon and home to President Richard Nixon’s “Winter White House.” Including the later Mackle-created entities Deltona Corp and General Development Corp, the family had a hand building, out of scrubland, the cities of Port Charlotte, North Port, Deltona, Port St. Lucie, Spring Hill and Marco Island.

Today, their son Frank Mackle III remembers well working with his father and uncles on these developments - including as a child of only aged 6 or 7 - on Key Biscayne. From his office in Miami, he recalled that before Key Biscayne, Florida developments had been mostly subdivisions. To build a community, they needed to have space for schools, government buildings, community centers and, of course, churches. Lots of them.

“It hadn’t been done much in the prior years,” said Mackle. “They were building entire cities.”

Mackle developments began, almost unbelievably, with $10 down payments. Prospects would subsequently pay $10 per month, all interest charges included, which would allow an individual to have a 10,000 square feet lot of land, with free use of a private bathing beach and fishing pier. Applicants would send in a “Reservation Coupon” to reserve the homesite, and when the deposit was received, you would be sent a contract and a map showing the exact location. After that, “you would have 30 days to decide.”

At the time GDC gave the land for St. Nathaniel’s, the late Charles H. Kellstadt, the former Chairman and CEO of Sears, was chairman. Kellstadt’s name, which lives on as the name for the DePaul School of Business in Chicago, is on the St. Nathaniel warranty deed. Kellstadt is credited with instituting the idea of refundability, trying to bring a feeling of trust into the up-and-down nature of Florida real estate.

The Rev. Canon Michael P. Durning, who served as rector of St. Mark’s Marco Island from 1992-97 and is Canon to the Ordinary Emeritus in the Diocese of Southwest Florida, said that the placement of churches serves the vision of the development, and the self-interest of the developer. But there is another reason, as well.

“Often, they do this because they love the work of the church” said Durning. This would be the case with the Mackles. But there was another denominator that set them apart from many developers: the family tended to donate multiple lots to every denomination. In some cases, almost a dozen different denominations, but in most cases, donations went to Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist and Congregational Churches. Mackle admits that in the 1950s and 60s, much of the development was “very remote land,” therefore the cost to them was not great.

“It’s what made a good community,” said Mackle. “I marvel at what the people have done with those communities as the years have passed.”

In North Port today, the boulevard of churches just off Tamiami Trail that the Mackles developed in Sarasota County is actually Biscayne Drive, named for Miami’s Key Biscayne. The word so evoked a tropical paradise that the Chevy Biscayne, sold from 1958-72, was a best-selling General Motors automobile. The General Development Company gave the three-acre Sarasota County campus to the Trustees of the Diocese of Southwest Florida on Sept 26, 1966.

“People call it Church Row,” said the Rev. Andrea Rose Hayden, the congregation’s priest-in-charge. Hayden had served in churches in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C., and most recently Asbury Park, N.J., before coming to Florida. She was introduced to the area by her parents, who were flown down to Florida on a junket, and ended up “landing” permanently. “General Development would do these weekend trips,” said Hayden.

The area became a hit with many of the West Indians who grew up in the British Caribbean and emigrated to New York. Retired, well-educated, and with civil service pensions, these arrivals became the backbone of the church. “You are in Jamaica, but you are also in the United States,” said Hayden. “I don’t know where else to go on vacation.”

In recent decades, waves of arrivals of new immigrants have made North Port’s Church Row even more interesting than when it began. There is New Hope Community Church sharing spaces with First Presbyterian Church; North Port Seventh-Day Adventist Church; St. Andrew's Ukrainian Church; Ukrainian Bible Church; and North Port Community United Church of Christ. Just a block away is Trinity United Methodist Church. The row also includes apartments, many of which are occupied by new immigrants from the Ukraine, who are helped by the food pantry at St. Nathaniel’s. Each church has a niche, and they do not overlap; the Adventists, for instance, offer excellent travelogue programs.

St. Nathaniel’s is a mix of demographics and regions. Many Episcopalians hail from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. The arrivals from New York City grew up attending Church of England parishes in the British islands. Stalwart Anglicans, they have upheld Episcopal worship as a first generation of church-builders died off.

“The parish is young, old, black, white and Asian,” said Hayden. “We have it all.”

St. Nathaniel’s is truly living out the idea of being a church home to their neighbors, which now include an increasing number of young families, as nearby houses get sold and renovated. They are also a true community center, hosting 14 different Alcoholics Anonymous groups, one of which meets there twice a day, seven days a week. The church is also a Sarasota County poll location. Before COVID, the church offered weekly food distribution for 125 to 150 families. Today, they have distribution every other week.

“If you build them,” said Hayden, “God will send them.”

Florida real estate land historian and appraiser Bruce Cummings Jr., in his Brief Florida Real Estate History, labeled the mid ‘50s to the mid ‘70s the era of the Great Florida Land Companies, when one third of Florida’s farmland was developed. Americans, lured by weather and cheap financing, flocked south, thanks to air conditioning, rising affluence, good climate, and increased leisure time. World War II vets came back to Florida after the war, having enjoyed the beaches and weather. The 1956 creation of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways made Florida within reach.

Charlotte County Library Historian and Archivist Dr. Jennifer Zoebelein has studied the history of the area, and helps the county preserve artifacts from pre-history to today. Florida, she says, has seen growth through boom and bust, and those changes continue. Transportation has always been at the center.

“It cannot be understated how important was the arrival of the railroad,” said Zoebelien. Early on, fishing, phosphate and turpentine helped to spur economic activity. It wasn’t until the 1920s that tourism arrived on a mass scale. The pivotal event in 1954 in Sarasota and Charlotte County was the sale of 80,000 acres in the area by A.C. Frizzell to the Mackles. “It completely transformed this area,” said Zoebelien.

Early Episcopal churches in the 18th century were located in ports; in the 19th century, in railroad towns. Into the 20th century, churches were located in suburbs. The Rev. Canon Durning, who served as interim at Good Shepherd, Dunedin, reminds that the circa 1886 parish is just off the Pinellas Trail, the former Plant Railway.

With his former parish Marco Island, Durning said that the location had a number of advantages. Not only was it in the center of a new, wealthy development, the land was fully paid for to begin with. And because the churches of the Naples Deanery had been supported by Trinity-by-the-Cove, it began its life without having to pay for their initial building.

The Mackle history was always present. It was a point of interest that St. Mark’s Marco, Durning noted, is located on Elkcam Circle - “Mackle” spelled backwards, and a trademark feature of each development. Some of the initial vision of Marco Island never materialized, even as St. Mark’s flourishes. The original design for Marco Island was a more “Hawaiian island” theme: prospects were taken around in a Deltona tiki boat, with a bow that looked right out of the Polynesian Hotel.

But there were larger changes in the water. Many of the developments in Florida, including Port Charlotte and Marco Island, featured rapidly dug canals with access to the gulf. These canals made hundreds of waterfront lots possible, and each lot, far more valuable. The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, coupled with the work of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in creating awareness around the fragility of the Everglades in the book River of Grass, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

The advent of the EPA, along with an appreciation for the importance of wetlands, altered these practices. By 1982, Deltona had settled with the State of Florida and stopped development on 15,000 acres of Marco Island area wetlands. The awareness about the value of wetlands was seen statewide, as well. This, along with inflation and the energy crisis, put a halt to the explosive Florida development boom, until later.

Today, the relationships between the original developers of the neighborhoods surrounding our churches are mostly forgotten. This is not so everywhere: the late developer Raymond Lutgert, who created the Park Shore neighborhood in Naples, gave the diocese the 3.5 acres of property that is now St. John’s. The 1970 church, which just celebrated 50 years, still has a working relationship with the family, said the Rev. Joe Maiocco, the parish rector.

“He [Raymond Lutgert] believed the community needed a spiritual center,” said the Rev. Maiocco.

A half-century after donating the property to the church, the Lutgerts still rent out parking spaces, and run a shuttle bus from the church to their Venetian Shops on Venetian Bay, across the canal. In return, The Lutgert Company, which is still a major player in Naples real estate, also has a standing invitation to have meetings at St. John’s.

In the files of the diocese is a June 17, 1970 memorandum from the Rev. Canon Herbert E. Beck, the then diocesan archdeacon, on the prospects for a new church in the 15,000 acre Deltona development Spring Hill, which is the northernmost parish of the diocese near Weeki Wachee Springs. At the time, Spring Hill was not known, but Weeki Wachee, just a few minutes north (and downhill, hence Spring Hill), were world famous for their underwater mermaids.

Beck, who amusingly spelled the springs “Weekiwachie???”, wrote the four-page, single-spaced typed memo to Bishop William Loftin Hargrave, to help the diocese assess the future of Spring Hill, and discern how a new congregation might work. It explains that the Mackle Bros. had made available to churches “4 or 5-acre tracts in good locations, generally near shopping centers.” The idea was that within six months of accepting the property, the diocese would commence building a church, or lose the opportunity.

The archdeacon reported that the Mackles, “being Catholic” had provided for churches, the first being a Catholic parish. Beck reported to Bishop Hargrave that the area was “fully operational” with beach, sewer lines, golf course and civic organizations. There were already Episcopal “pioneers” in the area, interested in starting a new church.

To scout out the location, Beck went to visit a “Mrs. Greene,” then a member of St. Stephens New Port Richey, where he was “introduced to several very fine people who either belong to the Presbyterian Church who now attend services there or go to St. John’s Brooksville.” He suggested that they form an Episcopal Club, and have either of the neighboring priests come down to have a communion service followed by a cook-out.

“I went to Spring Hill thinking I was going to another Port Charlotte or Sun City, but what I found instead was a very well-organized, well-ordered, well-planned and well-developed community,” Beck wrote.

Mrs. Greene, and the diocese, began building a church by 1972, which was completed in 1979. Today, the church is healthy, with 225 on an average Sunday, prior to coronavirus. The campus is a large parcel, five acres, with seven separate buildings. “It’s been a Godsend and a blessing,” said the parish’s rector, Rev. Lance Wallace, of the original donation of the land. “We feel very blessed to have this property.”

A challenge not unique to the Mackle developments is that they, as suburbs, struggle to find a sense of place, as they have no town center. “They didn’t build it like that,” said Wallace. Instead, the nearest town with a defined center is Brooksville, even though there are seven times as many people in Spring Hill. One other challenge is the sheer number of churches; the Mackles were generous with land, and each denomination was eager to build, which means today, there are at least 17 churches in the immediate area surrounding St. Andrew’s.

Through the years, St. Andrew’s has responded to changing demographics. It was the first in the area to have a preschool, still part of the campus. Today, a third generation is living in Spring Hill, the grandchildren of the earlier residents now in their 20s. That same sense of opportunity still exists today. Mackle houses were built in different decades, with different building styles and materials, but there is a common denominator: while unglamorous, they were made to withstand rot and hurricane, and are good candidates for flipping. “Houses are the old, concrete block, low ceiling types,” said Wallace. “Those houses are like bunkers.”

Ten miles from North Port is St. James Port Charlotte, the earliest of the diocesan Mackle churches. A modern community has grown up in Port Charlotte and North Port. Today, the area has an unexpected resident: John Mackle, grandson of Frank Mackle Jr. and son of Frank III. John moved to the area for his growing payroll and employee leasing business, Worksite Employment Leasing: his customers include many churches in North Port and Charlotte County. Mackle’s business partner proposed the area to him, saying that it was an “ideal spot to start a business.” That his grandfather literally brought this area into being, and laid out its streets and features, is still an odd feeling, especially as he drives across Elkcam Boulevard, or heads anywhere else in the 80,000-acre parcel.

“It’s all coming full circle,” said John Mackle. The Rev. Cesar Olivero is the current rector of St. James Port Charlotte, which was founded in 1962 on land given by the Mackles. The church itself was a plant of Church of the Good Shepherd, Punta Gorda. When Olivero first came in 2003, he had a few connections to some of the original members of the church; they have had new influxes each generation, as the houses have been sold.

Even with the pandemic, they are still averaging 70 on a Sunday. Their food pantry is busy, and still helping neighbors with their electric bills, and basic needs. With the next-door Methodist Church, they hold outdoor services, and share upkeep on a playground and New Beginnings Park. COVID has been hard: they have lost a half dozen members in the last year, and others have not had the Internet equipment to watch at home.

“We still support the needs of the community,” said Olivero. Before the pandemic, attendance was about 70. They have survived much, including Hurricane Charley, which elicited a visit from the Presiding Bishop after the repairs.

But there is great longevity at the parish, Olivero says, as one of their most recent parishioners, lived to be 102. The average age of the congregation is a very active 75. “We call this the Fountain of Youth,” jokes Olivero. “The people live forever.” END