City officials are lashing out at an adult-themed club located near the 9/11 Memorial for allegedly being a brothel in disguise.
A new lawsuit accuses TemptationsNY, a nightlife business on the sixth floor of 108 Greenwich St. that claims to be “a comfortable space for people to explore their sexuality,” of actually offering prostitutes while also serving drinks on the side without a liquor license.
Besides the business, the suit, filed Monday in Manhattan state Supreme Court, also names Queens-based Jian Feng Dai, the owner of No. 108, according to deeds and court filings, a 7-story mixed-use commercial building a few blocks south of the memorial’s twin pools.
“It is well established that a landlord has a duty to maintain his property in a safe condition, which requires him to take minimal precautions to protect against the reasonably foreseeable criminal acts of third persons,” says the suit, which wants a judge to shut down Temptations and slap all the parties involved with what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
The defendants have not yet filed a legal response, and an effort to track down a lawyer for Dai was unsuccessful. Temptations did not respond to an email for comment by press time.
But in a long and detailed description of Temptation’s offerings on its website, the club presents itself as a reputable business with a strict dress code—“absolutely no gym attire, sweatpants, track suits, pajamas, slippers/flip-flops, baseball hats, fitted hats, dew-rags or ripped jeans”—and also one that does not sell liquor, although guests can bring in bottles.
In addition, visitors, who are prescreened, apparently don’t have to disrobe if they choose not to, the site says: “There is no obligation to participate.”
Yet an undercover police officer purchased multiple drinks at Temptations during two separate visits in October, the suit claims. And on one of those evenings, a woman performing a lap dance on the officer allegedly propositioned him at a rate of $200, the suit says.
The filing adds that Temptations was the subject of seven complaints by neighbors to police last year.
The crackdown comes as Dai battles with one of 108 Greenwich’s former retail tenants, Suspenders Restaurant & Bar, over its apparent failure to pay back-rent. In a separate case from August, Dai sued the owners of the bar, which seems to have shut down in 2022, six years before its lease was to expire, for stiffing him out of $2.7 million.
But in their defense, the bar’s owners argue the “illegal sex club” upstairs was why they had to close up shop prematurely. Specifically, Suspenders became overwhelmed by frequent repairs to pipes that became jammed because Temptations’ customers allegedly kept flushing prophylactics down toilets, according to the answer the bar submitted in November in the rent case.
The ex-Suspenders spot, whose windows are now lined with brown paper, seems poised to soon welcome a deli, Flavor Taste. A new bar, Whiskey Blue NYC, opened on the second floor earlier this month. The third floor of the commercial building appears to be home to a hair salon.
Prior to Suspenders’ opening in 2016, the storefront sold 9/11-themed memorabilia, including NYPD and NYFD T-shirts, Google Street View photos show.
Dai, through the Fresh Meadows-based shell company CYP Enterprise LLC, paid $5.1 million for the 15,700-square-foot building near Rector Street in 2012, the city register says.
In a statement, the city’s Law Department said it “will take aggressive legal action” in order to “put an immediate stop to these illegal activities which erode the quality of life in our communities.”
