Friends turned foes gird for battle for car-wash dominance on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury

Seven years after the Boston Conservation Commission gave him approval, a construction company hired by Ronen Drory recently began work to convert a long vacant lot on VFW Parkway southbound in West Roxbury into one of his Prestige car washes - right across from Adam Korngold's Waves car wash on the northbound side of the road.

Drory, who along with his brothers operates several car washes in eastern Massachusetts, got a building permit from ISD in September to construct a $700,000, 7,800-square foot building with one full-service car-wash tunnel, two touchless car-wash bays and two self-service car-wash bays.

Drory and Korngold fiercely battled for several years over Drory's proposed car wash, which will go where a closed McDonald's stood until some vandals burned it down in 2013, on land then briefly owned by an Israeli real-estate investor who planned to build a kosher hotel there.

The two sued each other in Suffolk Superior Court - with Korngold adding the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as a defendant. The department ruled - twice - in favor of Drory's proposal, after Korngold complained about the project's possible impact on wetlands and trees on the site, which borders the Charles River and includes an easement for an MWRA sewer.

Even the Army Corps of Engineers got pulled into the dispute - to help a DEP investigator determine whether Drory's project might harm the river or the wetlands, which the state concluded it would not.

Drory and Korngold were once friends, according to a court filing by Korngold - a counterclaim to Drory's suit against him for trying to block the project:

As of December 2015 and January 2016, Drory and Korngold were friends and Drory had invited Korngold to several family gatherings.

But that's when their friendship started falling apart, according to court filings.

On Nov. 18, 2015, , Drory's Titanium Group bought the roughly 2 1/2-acre parcel where the McDonald's used to be for $1.4 million from King David Hotels, whose owner gave up on its idea of a 69-room hotel aimed at observant Jews - and which had itself had paid just $800,000 for the parcel ten months earlier, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.

Exactly how the two car wash operators fell out depends on whose arguments in court filings you believe.

Drory, who sued first, after Korngold had lost an appeal before the Boston Conservation Commission, charges that Korngold agreed, on Jan. 9, 2016, to lease the land to build a southbound version of his northbound car wash. The basic idea was hardly novel, given that there were once McDonald's basically across the street from each other to capture traffic in both directions - although drivers coming south from West Roxbury can get to Waves via an official and traffic-signaled U-turn lane.

But then, Drory alleges, Korngold abruptly pulled out of the deal, which called for some immediate $10,000 monthly payments, and began working to undermine him.

Instead, Waves and Korngold commenced a long-lasting and calculated campaign to prevent Titanium from making any productive use of the Property, and to sabotage any need for them to perform their Lease obligations.

For example, when Titanium sought to implement a short term agreement to have buses temporarily parked on the Property, to mitigate the damages caused to Titanium by Waves' non-payment, Korngold and Waves complained about that use to municipal authorities and sought to block it. ...

When Titanium initiated the necessary steps to respond to the enforcement proceeding [the commission had initially gotten involved after Drory had a shed on the parcel knocked down without approval] and seek approval for development of the Property from the Commission, Korngold pursued an extended opposition under the false representation that he was part of an existing citizens group (identified by him as "Protect West Roxbury Wetlands"). Under that same name, on information and belief, Korngold created a website in opposition to the development of the Property and purchased print advertising for the same purpose. In addition, he hired a wetlands scientist and an engineer to participate in his opposition to Titanium's position, and he personally appeared and spoke in opposition at multiple hearings of the Commission. Korngold had no personal standing to oppose Titanium's application because he was neither a Boston resident nor an abutting land owner.

Korngold, though, says the whole megillah was an attempt by Drory to squeeze money out of him:

In November 2015, Korngold inquired of Drory what he was planning to do with the Property. During this conversation, Korngold specifically asked Drory if he intended to develop the Property as a car wash.

While Drory had no intention of developing the Property as a car wash, he represented to Korngold that it was his intention to construct a competing car wash across the street from the car wash operated by Waves.

Drory further represented that his competing car wash would have a several negative impact on Waves.

In making these representations, it was Drory's intention to compel Defendants to enter into a lease for the Property to prevent construction of a competing car wash business.

Still, Korngold continued, the two met on Dec. 15 to discuss the parcel, at which Drory allegedly pulled out plans for an "Express $3 Car Wash and Free Vacuum" plan. Facing a potentially ruinous competitor across the street, Korngold agreed to keep talking, but later on, he alleges, Drory demanded he pay $300,000 a year to keep his now former friend from building a car wash on the site. Korngold says he told Drory that's "crazy" and far above what the property could get on the open market. But, he continues:

In an effort to bully and intimidated Korngold, Drory stated "Hey that's what I am going to charge and if you don't like it I will operate my own business."

In a further effort to force Korngold to enter into such a lease, Drory stated to numerous individuals in the car wash industry of his intentions to develop the Property as a car wash with the intention that this information would be communicated to Korngold.

In the meantime, Korngold's complaint alleges, he had hired a lawyer, who concluded Drory couldn't build his proposed car wash anyway, because of issues related to the nearby Charles River - and some nearby trees and other vegetation that could be disturbed or killed by construction - and because of an MWRA easement on the property that included a gravel path to a sewage pumping station near the river.

But in July, 2017, the Boston Conservation Commission concluded Drory could go ahead with his project, that it would not disturb the river or the wetlands any more than the decades of previous commercial use of the site - zoned, in fact for commercial use - would.

Drory sued Korngold in Suffolk Superior Court that October. Korngold countered with his counterclaim in April, 2018.

Separately, he and his "citizens group" appealed the commission's approval to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which in December, 2018, upheld the city ruling - after an investigation that included seeking help from the Army Corps of Engineers, which has a particular expertise in Charles River issues because of its roughly 8,500 acres of natural flood-control holdings along the river.

Korngold then appealed that ruling to a state administrative-review board, which in November, 2020, upheld the earlier ruling, saying that, if anything, Drory's plan would provide more protection for wetlands along the river because it was based on a map developed by the MWRA in 2000 that had a wider than required vegetation-protection zone around its easement.

A month later, Korngold sued both Drory and the state DEP in Suffolk Superior Court, alleging the DEP and Conservation Commission rulings were based on flawed data and observations and that the proposed new car wash would harm the wetlands and trees along the river.

Drory's suit was scheduled for trial in May, 2020, after a judge had dismissed two of his claims as impermissible under the state's anti-SLAPP law, on the grounds that even if Korngold had set up the citizen group as a strawman effort, he still had the Constitutional right to petition government, in this case, the Boston Conservation Commission.

But the trial was put off due to Covid-19 restrictions.

In August, 2021, the two would-be competitors agreed to dismiss the two suits with prejudice, meaning they wouldn't be bringing them again. DEP agreed to the same condition on the suit it was named on.

For three years, the site remained empty, save for a large "For Rent" sign and smaller signs warning would-be junk dumpers the site was under 24-hour camera surveillance. A box truck appeared on the site, offering a discount for Prestige car washes. Then, within the last few weeks, preparation of the site for construction began.