THE OLD MAN AND THE HIGH-RISE

His home surrounded, Julliano Jeyamo is battling an apartment developer over his dying garden. But the law is on the side of the developer.

On Fifth Avenue in the rapidly changing Flagler Village, a humble house surrounded by a forest of tropical trees looks like it’s about to be swallowed by a five-story wall of pale gray concrete.

Julliano Jeyamo, the feisty owner of a tiny home now dwarfed by the mammoth high-rise that’s sprouted next door, says he’s been battling the project’s big shot developer for two years — and losing.

It’s a classic David and Goliath tale unfolding on a once sleepy street in Flagler Village, an up-and-coming neighborhood in downtown Fort Lauderdale fast being overtaken by highrise apartments, where zoning changes have created a collision of old Fort Lauderdale and the flashy future.

Jeyamo, a 68-year-old native-born Israeli, says little guys like him are being pushed out. But he refuses to go.

“I don’t want to sell,” said Jeyamo, who bought the wood-framed cottage at 714 Northeast Fifth Avenue for $46,000 in 2001. “This is my house. I wouldn’t sell it for any amount of money.”

Jeyamo’s home was built in 1931, long before the development boom hit Flagler Village — a boom courted by city leaders to transform a blighted area on the edge of downtown and secure Fort Lauderdale’s status as the urban center of Broward County, all while lining city coffers with more tax dollars.

To encourage growth, city officials zoned the area high-density in the 1980s, allowing developers to build right up to property lines, regardless of what lies next door.

— Julliano Jeyamo, home owner

Je ya m o ’s m o d e s t two-bedroom home, all of 878 square feet, now sits in the shadow of what Jeyamo calls the monster project that borders his property: Quantum Flagler Village, a $160 million mixed-use development at 701 North Federal Highway with two 15-story apartment towers, a nine-story Marriott and a five-story parking garage that casts permanent shade on his yard.

Jeyamo says he lost more than peace and quiet when the construction cranes and buzzing chainsaws settled in next door. He also lost his lush green garden with its cheery burst of pink and yellow flowers. The peaceful sanctuary, so carefully tended over the years, now looks more like a place where things come to die, Jeyamo says.

‘They killed my trees’

“My grandfather gave me a bonsai 30 years ago. They poured concrete on it and it’s now dead. They killed my trees, all my shrubs.”

The royal palms that once lined his property stand dead as telephone poles, their green fronds missing. His foxtail palms are dead. So are the sabal palms, a tangerine tree and the old bonsai, a treasured gift from his grandfather.

“You can’t imagine all the damage he did in my garden,” he said. “My grandfather gave me a

JOE CAVARETTA/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL Julliano Jeyamo’s home is one of the last of its kind in Fort Lauderdale’s trendy Flagler Village neighborhood as apartment towers rise on block after block.

SUSANNAH BRYAN/SUN SENTINEL PHOTOS Jeyamo points to one of the trees he says died after a high-rise tower started going up next door. Many of the palm trees hug the wall of a parking garage waiting for stucco. Prime Group, the developer building Quantum Flagler Village, says homeowner Julliano Jeyamo refuses to let workers on his property to finish the work.