The city wants to padlock a Midtown massage parlor where workers allegedly offered undercover cops sex acts for cash, more than a decade after the building’s owner agreed to a court order barring prostitution there.
Twice in late May, a worker at East Garden Spa, on the third floor of 23 W. 45th St., agreed to perform a sex act on an undercover officer for an extra $100 on top of a massage, according to a nuisance abatement suit the city filed Sept. 30 in Manhattan Supreme Court and obtained by The Post.
On May 21, the officer was offered an hourlong massage for $80, plus the $100 add-on, the suit says. On May 30, it was a 30-minute rubdown for $60, with the same $100 extra.
A 911 caller had reported prostitution at the spa, according to the suit, which cites NYPD records reviewed in February.
Online ads for the spa promise “Young Hot Beautiful Asian Girls” and declare “I’m ready to give you the HOT!!” One escort-site listing says the spa is open seven days a week until 1:30 a.m. Another touts a “4hand special.”
The city is suing the building, 531 Central Park Avenue Associates LLC, which the suit identifies as the owner, and the spa’s unnamed operators. It wants the unit closed for a year, its contents seized by the sheriff and each defendant fined $1,000 for every day it intentionally allowed the nuisance.
But the building had already changed hands. An entity called 21 W 45 LLC bought it on Sept. 16, two weeks before the suit was filed, property records show. Our Town NY reported in early September that the developer plans to demolish it and put up a new building spanning 21 and 23 W. 45th St.
It’s not the first time the city has gone after the unit.
In November 2013, a woman inside the same third-floor space agreed to perform a sex act on an undercover detective for $40 and was arrested, court records show. The detective returned in February 2014 and paid $60 for a massage from a woman who couldn’t produce a valid massage license. She was arrested, too.
The city sued 531 Central Park Avenue Associates and the tenant at the time in November 2014. A city lawyer warned in court papers that “the community and neighboring businesses have severely suffered and continue to suffer, as a result of the illegal activity occurring at the subject premises.”
The landlord settled and agreed to an injunction barring prostitution in the unit, which a judge signed off on in March 2015. That history means the owner should have been on alert, the new suit argues.
The spa may already be finished. A woman who answered its phone said it had closed and been locked up because the building was sold. When The Post visited Monday, the elevator wouldn’t stop on the third floor.
The historic hobby shop The Red Caboose, which occupied the basement, closed for good in October after more than 50 years in business, 32 of them on West 45th Street.
The building directory lists Seville Real Estate Services as its manager and leasing agent. A woman who answered the phone there said the firm was “not associated with that building anymore.”
The deed in the 2014 exhibits appears to be from 2004, which would mean 531 Central Park owned the building for about 22 years.
Neighbors said they had no idea anything seedy was going on at the spa.
A manager at Sophie’s Cuban Cuisine next door said she hadn’t heard anything, and neither had an employee at the souvenir shop on the other side of No. 23.
A bartender at The Dawson, the family-owned Irish pub on the building’s ground floor, said the bar caters to a corporate crowd and she had never seen any riffraff tied to the massage business.
Dr. Igor Kletsman, founder of NY Medical, the primary care practice on the second floor, said in an email that his office has “no affiliation” with the spa “and no firsthand knowledge of its operations or of the allegations.”
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