New York City has filed a nuisance-abatement lawsuit seeking to shut down East Garden Spa, a business on the third floor of 23 W. 45th St. in Midtown Manhattan, over allegations that workers offered sex acts for cash during undercover visits in May. The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on September 30, targets a massage unit the city says has now been accused of the same kind of activity twice in roughly a decade.
According to the lawsuit, as reported by the New York Post, an East Garden Spa worker agreed to perform a sex act for an undercover officer in exchange for an additional $100 during an hourlong, $80 massage on May 21. Nine days later, on May 30, another worker allegedly made the same offer for an extra $100 during a 30-minute, $60 massage, the suit states. The city is asking a judge to close the spa's unit for one year, let the sheriff seize its contents, and impose $1,000 fines for each day defendants are found to have intentionally allowed the alleged nuisance to continue.
The city's complaint names 531 Central Park Avenue Associates LLC, identified in the suit as the building's owner, along with East Garden Spa's unnamed operators, the Post's reporting shows. Per the same account, the legal action follows a 911 call reporting prostitution at the address and a review of NYPD records in February.
A Decade-Old Echo at the Same Address
This isn't the first time this exact unit has drawn city scrutiny. Back in 2013, a woman working at the same third-floor space allegedly agreed to perform a sex act for an undercover detective for $40, the station's report notes. The following year, in 2014, a different undercover detective paid $60 for a massage at the unit, and a worker there was arrested after failing to produce a valid massage license, per the same account.
That earlier episode led the city to sue 531 Central Park Avenue Associates and the tenant at the time in November 2014. The landlord settled that lawsuit, and in March 2015 agreed to an injunction — signed off on by a judge — barring prostitution in the unit, the report states. Deed records cited in the article show 531 Central Park Avenue Associates LLC had owned the building for about 22 years as of the new suit, based on an apparent 2004 purchase date.
Pattern Seen Across Other Manhattan Spas
The East Garden Spa case fits a broader pattern of nuisance-abatement actions the city has brought against Manhattan massage businesses in recent months. In August, a Manhattan Supreme Court justice ordered Natural Spa, located at 505 West 44th Street, shuttered after prosecutors alleged undercover NYPD operations found workers offering sexual acts for money, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of that case, which noted the spa operated less than 200 feet from P.S. 51 Elias Howe elementary school.
A separate suit detailed by amNY sought to close Wan Mei Li Spa on the second floor of 799 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side, where an undercover officer allegedly received an $80 massage on February 21 and was offered manual stimulation for an extra $40; a second officer was allegedly offered a 30-minute massage for $60 and sex for an additional $200 on March 12. And in 2019, court documents reviewed by West Side Rag described an attendant arrested and charged with prostitution after an undercover investigation at a since-closed massage business, part of a case that led the city to shut down Chinese Best Qi Gong Tuina Back Rub & Foot Rub on West 103rd Street as a public nuisance.
The New York Police Department's Civil Enforcement Unit says it obtains closing orders under the state's Nuisance Abatement Law for a range of alleged crimes, including prostitution. State statutes cited by the New York State Senate address injunctions tied to houses of prostitution, including the scope of such injunctions, penalties for violations, and abatement orders covering the sale and removal of property.
Neighbors Say They Noticed Nothing
Businesses sharing the West 45th Street building told the Post they had no inkling of what was allegedly happening upstairs. A representative for Sophie's Cuban Cuisine said the manager had not heard anything about activity at the spa, and an employee at a nearby souvenir shop said the same. A bartender at The Dawson, a family-owned Irish pub on the building's ground floor, said she had never seen riffraff tied to the massage business.
Dr. Igor Kletsman, founder of NY Medical, a primary care practice on the building's second floor, said through the practice that it has no affiliation with East Garden Spa and no firsthand knowledge of its operations or the allegations against it. A woman reached at East Garden Spa by phone said the spa had closed and been locked up because the building was sold, the Post reported.
The building changed hands on September 16, with 21 W 45 LLC purchasing the property, according to the report. A developer plans to demolish the building and construct a new one spanning 21 and 23 W. 45th St., per Our Town NY as cited in the Post's reporting. Seville Real Estate Services had been listed as the building's manager and leasing agent in a directory, but a representative for the firm said it was no longer associated with the building. The Red Caboose, a toy store that had operated on West 45th Street for 32 years, closed this month after more than 50 years in business.
