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3A | MEAL HELP
WINK’s March to a Million Meals will
help St. Matthew’s House feed others
F E B . 1 4 - 2 0 , 2025
3A | BRINGING ATTENTION
5B | BEE PROTECTORS
marked Black graves designated historical site
is one of bees’ biggest supporters
Naples-based Rubee’s Raw Florida Honey
With Scout’s help, Rosemary Cemetery’s un-
Valentine’s Day
Tim Aten Knows Tim Aten
Landert Bread rolling out local retail store Landert Bread’s European rolls, bread, cakes and pastries will be available to more Naples area residents starting this month. A wholesale operation for more than 12 years, Naples-based Landert is launching a retail store in Collier County. Landert has been a wholesaler to more than 100 local businesses such as hotels, restaurants, country clubs, senior residences, caterers and specialized food stores, but its baked goods have been available for retail sale only at farmers markets in the Naples area, particularly the Saturday market at the Shoppes at Vanderbilt in North Naples. Landert’s retail store will be at 4440 Domestic Ave., Unit 2, next door to Paloma Blanca Cuba Cafe in the East Naples industrial park between Airport-Pulling and Livingston roads. “It was office space that we transformed into the bakery store,” said Alexandra Landert, daughter of Landert Bread founders Jürg and Leslie Landert. “Since 2012, we’ve just done markets and the rest is wholesale. We’ve been thinking about a store for a while, but it didn’t happen until it all kind of aligned this past summer when we found a spot that would work, and it’s nice combining the wholesale with the retail and finally being able to serve the public. We’ve been in the community of Southwest Florida, but now we’ll be in more of the community, and we’re very excited about that.” Landert Bread is more of a retailer See ATEN KNOWS, Page 9A
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Artist Paul Arsenault and his wife, Eileen, have been around much of the world together, but settled in Old Naples decades ago. Photo by Olga Hayes
THAT FIRST HELLO
We find our Valentines in ordinary ways, with extraordinary results By Harriet Howard Heithaus harriet.heithaus@naplespress.com
We meet our future loves in the most casual ways. But those everyday meetings reveal strong similarities that lead to love — and to interesting stories on how that person became the one with whom we’ll celebrate Valentine’s Day.
So many coincidences
Eileen Arsenault demanded to see her future husband’s driver’s license the first time they met. “He was creeping me out, he was so agreeable,” she recalled. The two
crossed paths at a party in Paul Arsenault’s honor, him coming, her leaving. When she mentioned she had moved to Naples from Massachusetts, Paul Arsenault told her he had too. When she told him she had lived in Rocky Neck, why, he had, too. Then she told him she had stayed at Parker’s Rooming House. Yes. He had, too. But the thunderbolt came when Eileen, talking about the coming month, told Paul her birthday was June 27. “Well, that’s my birthday,” he declared. “She’s kind of looking behind her for an exit,” recalled Paul, laughing. “So she says, ‘Can I see your license?’ She’s trying to card me because she wants to solve this right away.” See COUPLES, Page 11A
Young finance entrepreneurs help tackle Collier’s affordability crisis By Aisling Swift
Two former Wall Street investors have launched an affordable housing program designed to help essential-services personnel and other employees in Collier County move from rentals to a home purchase in three years.
Naples residents Matthew Smith and Patrick Korth, who met at the University of Notre Dame as finance majors, founded Build To Rent To Own LLC, or B2R2O, to develop home-ownership opportunities for Collier’s “community workforce.” The focus is on households making between 60% and 120% of the area median income, $62,580 to $125,160, with an emphasis on essential-service personnel.
“Program participants are provided affordable rents for a three-year period while they’re working through the Housing Navigator Program to transition to homeownership, and they do so with equity built into that home, so it’s an exciting model,” The Housing Alliance President Michael Puchalla told roughly 50 people See HOMES, Page 15A