Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
New landlord for monkeys
Guardians of vervet colony in Dania Beach seek extended lease
The decades-old colony of vervet monkeys in Dania Beach has a new landlord and the preservationists who are their guardians are hoping for a long-term lease.
Days after the popular Park ’N Fly concession said it will soon close its sprawling lot for air travelers near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, an industrial real estate developer announced it has acquired the land, which includes a warren of mangroves where the monkeys often forage, and will build a warehouse and distribution center on the property.
Bridge Industrial of Chicago said it bought 22 acres at 2200 NE 7th Ave, near Port Everglades, and expects to have its building completed by early 2024.
But the real estate, which includes the expansive parking lot and acres of lush mangroves, also comes with a special community of tenants: around 40 monkeys who are the offspring of non-native long-tailed primates that escaped their owners in the 1940s.
Dr. Deborah “Missy” Williams, an adjunct science professor at Lynn University and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, has overseen the colony since 2014. She established a nonprofit known as the Dania Beach Vervet Project to preserve the monkeys’ habitat in 2016.
As Park ‘N Fly prepared to leave, she worried about how the new landlord would react.
To her relief, she said Bridge Industrial wants to write a new lease for the project before July 15.
“I believe the executives at Park ’N Fly passed my information along and mentioned to them what the project is about,” Williams said by phone Tuesday. “It seems to be working out.”
A company executive stopped short of saying a leasing deal is done, but indicated the business wants to work with the project.
“We look forward to continuing the relationship with the Dania Beach Vervet Project,” Aaron Hirschl, vice president of Bridge Industrial, said in an email. He added the company expects to break ground on its warehouse construction project before the end of the year.
The mangroves occupied by the monkeys “are not part of the development plan,” said Kevin Carroll, a partner with Bridge Industrial: “The warehouse will be developed where the Park ’N Fly building and parking lot was located.”
Williams said a new enclosure for the animals, started earlier this year in an area adjacent to the parking lot, is now complete.
The objective, according to the project’s website, vervetproject.org, is to maintain “a large sanctuary to house the monkeys to reduce human interactions and urban hazards.”
Over the years, the colony has lost several inhabitants to “electrocutions, car collisions, and severe wounds of unknown origins. Due to their nonnative status, we cannot treat and release the monkeys back into the mangroves,” the website says.
If one of the animals is injured, the goal is to make treatment available from a local veterinarian.
“The idea is to take possession of any monkey that is injured,” Williams said. “[The enclosure is] the last stop for any monkey that is at risk of being euthanized.”
Restless residents
“With this particular type of monkey, the males do leave their groups every few years,” Williams said.
But most of the population stays close to home.
“They stay in mangroves during the heat of the day and will come out to the business parking lots later in the afternoon looking for food,” Williams said. “There are people that do feed them.”
Their mangrove domain totals 16 acres, most of it now owned by Building Industrial and another 3.6 acres controlled by a nearby Hertz car rental business.
There is perimeter fencing on both sides of the combined properties.
“But the monkeys typically climb to the top of the trees,” Williams said. “The fence can’t stop them. They’re up and over the trees and off they go.”
Normally they make beelines for people with food.
“They do eat natural foods,” she said. That would include a wide ranging menu of lizards, ants and spiders, as well as Brazilian peppers, sea grapes when they’re in season and ornamental plants that spout around local parking lots.
But the monkeys are no fools.
“They do prefer human foods, absolutely,” she said. They like sugar and salt and have shown no qualms about accepting trail mix and other offerings from the Park ’N Fly employees.
A break on the lease?
There’s no telling how employees who will work at the new warehouse will react to the furry primates when it opens in early 2024.
But between now and then, Williams, like every South Florida tenant who is weathering the region’s white hot real estate market, is hoping for a better deal. The nonprofit was paying Park ’N Fly $1,000 a month.
“I’m hoping the new company will be sympathetic to our cause and give a cheaper lease, and will renew every year,” she said. “I’m hoping they will consider a five-year lease.”