Car wash loses lease, leaving longtime co-owner with little to show except keychains

When Commack Hand Car Wash lost its lease this spring, former co-owner Bruce Klein lost the business he’d helped build since the early 1980s.

Bolla, the Garden City-based gas station and convenience station chain, assumed the lease on the Jericho Turnpike site where the car wash was located in January and sent a lease termination letter to Klein and his partner, Klein said. Klein said he walked away with little more than "keychains, hats and scrap paper," having declined Bolla’s offer to stay on for a time as an employee.

"I’m a little bitter … It’s jarring, when you’re used to working six days a week for 35 years."

Klein’s team washed up to 200 cars a day, serving a clientele of classic car enthusiasts, salespeople and new car owners who paid $32 for basic cleaning or $49 for deluxe. Deluxe included all the waxes and sprays plus a shine and wipe down, all done by hand with a level of care he said machines couldn’t match.

Klein said his father, Harvey Klein, bought the car wash in 1982, but not the land on which it sits. A third party, Alfred Properties, bought that .95-acre site in 1985, according to property records. Klein said his company negotiated leases with Alfred until 2014, when Bolla took over part of the property. After that, Klein said he was never able to get another lease or even a lease commitment from Alfred, even though at one point he offered to double the four-figure monthly rent he was paying. He stayed open on a month-to-month basis until the end of May. An Alfred representative could not be reached.

In 2019, Bolla got Town of Smithtown approval to demolish a filling station next to the car wash and build a new one with a 1,200-square-foot convenience store. That site opened to the public in late spring. Klein said Bolla CEO Harvinder Singh told him he intended to convert the car wash into a mostly automated express facility.

Newsday shared Klein’s account with Bolla chief legal officer Michael Lewis, who did not dispute it, aside from offering a rosier version of the parting: "The former car wash subtenant, whose lease expired in 2014, amicably vacated the property so that Bolla could make necessary renovations to the facility," Lewis said in an email. "Bolla continues to employ Mr. Klein’s partner and former staff to operate the car wash, and is evaluating further modernization of the facility."

Bolla employs more than 1,400 people and operates more than 200 locations.

A reporter’s visit this week showed the gas station thronged, neatly landscaped and practically gleaming; the car wash also was busy.

One of Klein’s regulars, Michael Catania, an IT professional from Melville who used to bring in his Ford F-150, said he wouldn’t patronize the new business. "I get it — that's the way capitalism is," he said, but "they just seem to come in and wipe out the competition."

Klein, 59, with two children approaching college age, said he was looking for a new job. "Wherever I can fit in," he said.