The former VFW Hall in Andrew Square is at the center of a drawn-out legal battle involving attorneys for On the Dot developer Core Investments and Gregg Donovan, a South Boston developer. Photo by Steve Adams | Banker & Tradesman Staff
With its windowless peeling brick facade, the former VFW hall tucked behind the subway station in South Boston’s Andrew Square seems like the unlikely locus of a high-stakes legal battle.
But the 7 Ellery St. property happens to be located next to a 21-acre site that’s approved for On the Dot, a 3.8 million-square-foot development by Boston-based Core Investments. The VFW hall’s owner, South Boston developer Gregg Donovan, says Core Investments needs to acquire his property next to an entrance to the On the Dot site for an access road.
“My property is sitting there, and you’d think they would make a reasonable offer to buy it,” Donovan said in an interview. “They were extremely low-balling the property. I was like, ‘You can’t even buy a three-family for what you are offering for my property, and you’ve got a billion-dollar development project here.’”
Since 2021, attorneys for the Massachusetts Veterans of Foreign Wars have been in court seeking to void Donovan’s 2012 acquisition of the property. They claim that the local chapter sold Donovan the property in violation of the national VFW’s bylaws for real estate dispositions.
Donovan and his attorneys say the Massachusetts VFW lawsuit has been orchestrated by Core Investments and its legal team, Boston-based Bernkopf Goodman. They claim a Bernkopf Goodman attorney took steps to hide the firm’s involvement in emails sent to the VFW’s attorneys, and are seeking to prove it through additional discovery.
“This is not about VFW property disposition requisites, rather it is about Core using VFW-MA to steal the Property,” attorney Edmund Allcock of Braintree-based Allcock & Marcus wrote in filing in Suffolk Superior Court.
In a court filing, attorneys for the Massachusetts VFW said there was no agreement for Core Investments to bankroll the lawsuit against Donovan Properties when it was filed in April 2021.
The 3.8 million square-foot On the Dot development in South Boston would include 11 buildings containing housing, office, labs and retail space. Image courtesy of Utile and Stantec
That hasn’t satisfied Donovan Properties’ legal team, which won a recent decision ordering their opponents to turn over additional documents.
On April 29, Suffolk Superior Court Chief Justice Michael Ricciuti gave attorneys for the Massachusetts VFW 10 days to hand over documents related to the case that were generated from August 2023 to June 2024.
“It is evident that plaintiffs’ failure to comply with the court’s May 30, 2024 order merits sanctions,” Ricciuti wrote in the ruling. “The order required plaintiffs to produce all communications between VFW-MA’s representatives and those of Core.”
The VFW’s attorneys have already turned over more than 5,500 pages of emails and documents related to the case, including communications with Core Investments’ attorney at Bernkopf Goodman, Jason Manekas.
A Sought-After Stretch of Dot Ave.
Donovan contends Core Investments needs to acquire the VFW parcel to build a sufficient access road into the 21-acre On the Dot site, which could eventually include 11 buildings and nearly 1,500 housing units.
“Ultimately, they needed this property,” Donovan said. “We own the top of the street behind the Andrew Square T station, and they have to create this main road to create this mini-city. And it’s not set up for two-way traffic when you’re coming in off a main road.”
The industrial section of Dorchester Avenue in South Boston became a sought-after acquisition target in recent years, attracting local and national developers including Alexandria Real Estate Equities, National Development, HYM Investment Group and Core Investments. They envisioned redeveloping parcels currently occupied by companies such as building suppliers and construction equipment rentals with high-rise housing, office buildings and research labs.
Before the big players arrived on the scene, Donovan had carved out a niche as a local developer, project manager and adviser for third-party clients.
One opportunity emerged in the Ellery Street property, which includes the 5,061 square-foot former VFW Hall on a 6,221 square-foot lot.
Donovan contends Core Investments needs to acquire the VFW parcel to build a sufficient access road into its property, which could eventually include 11 buildings and nearly 1,400 housing units. Image courtesy of Google Maps
In its heyday, Andrew Square VFW Post 6536 functioned as a community hub, hosting wedding receptions and Scout troop meetings along with its full-time role as a watering hole for members. But like many fraternal organizations, membership dwindled in the early 21st century, while South Boston real estate became increasingly attractive to outside investors.
Donovan said he agreed to lease the property back to the VFW after the 2012 acquisition, which lists a purchase price of $10.
“It was going to stay a VFW for 20 years and that was our goal. They decided to hand back the keys on their own,” Donovan said.
In 2021, the VFW of Massachusetts filed suit against the Andrew Square chapter and Donovan Properties LLC, the corporate entity that had acquired 7 Ellery St. in 2012.
The complaint, filed by attorneys from Westwood-based law firm Valerio Dominello & Hillman, claimed that Donovan Properties concealed its ownership by failing to file a deed until 2018. By then, the property was “a valuable investment property” worth over $600,000, the complaint stated.
The lawsuit claimed that the sale violated the national VFW’s bylaws and deprived the state VFW of its rights to the proceeds from the sale.
In a 2023 email included as an exhibit, VFW Massachusetts attorney Robert Hillman wrote that Core Investments had made a $3 million offer to Donovan for the property prior to the start of litigation, but Donovan now thought the VFW property was worth $5 million.
Steve Adams
Core Investments Proposes Development
The increase in asking price appears to reflect the surge of development proposals along Dorchester Avenue in the past decade.
After acquiring a cluster of nearby properties, Core Investments proposed a last-mile Amazon distribution center in 2020. After that project hit permitting snags, the firm submitted plans for a large mixed-use project totaling 3.8 million square feet in 2023.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the first phase of Core Investments’ On the Dot project in April 2024, including three office-lab buildings and a 331-unit apartment tower that would be built next to the former VFW Hall.
The project has yet to break ground. Core Investments announced last fall that Sterling Bay, a Chicago-based investment and development firm with $20 billion in assets under management, had joined the project team. The project will take 10 to 15 years to build out, the companies estimated at the time.
Core Investments CEO David Pogorelc did not respond to a request for comment. Bernkopf Goodman’s Manekas and Robert Hillman did not respond to messages seeking comment.
