Where is spa castle

You don't have to be nude You can come as you are. There's a swim up bar! You can bathe amidst amazing Manhattan views. You get to breathe souped-up air.

Hanky-panky in the saunas is strictly forbidden. The air in one of the saunas tastes salty! There are super-luxe private spas. One of the private rooms is made of real gold. Foot reflexology treatment is a cure-all. Enjoy the peace and become one with nature without having to set foot on dirt. You can also cool your jets with their aqua jets placed in each of their heated, four-season pools. These jets work with the heat of the pool to target pressure points throughout your body, while giving you a seat with a view.

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To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox. On a visit to Korea in , some of his friends took him to an extravagant new bathhouse, where he noticed a group of American servicemen among the bathers.

He saw that they were enjoying themselves. This surprised him. It had not occurred to him that something as uncommon in the States as public bathing would appeal to Americans.

And not just public bathing, but public bathing in the nude. In other countries, the spa or its local variant--the hamam, the banya--is ubiquitous, but for most Americans, "taking the waters" has never been part of everyday life. Convinced that a Korean mega-spa would nonetheless do well in New York City, he bought a dilapidated warehouse in College Point, Queens, a bulge of postindustrial real estate protruding into the East River.

The view was less than spectacular. Across the water stood a sewage plant. Chon, however, was sure that everything would work out. Few agreed. But, from the start, Chon's first business foray into the world beyond the city's close-knit Korean-American enclave proved difficult as none of his other endeavors had. City approvals dragged on for months, and Chon's hard-driving style turned off some neighbors. Along the way, members of the local community board and several elected officials tried to block the spa from opening.

They were worried about the traffic it would bring--or at least that's what they said in their formal complaints to the city. Some neighbors thought the spa would serve as a front for a brothel. Chon appeared at community board meetings and tried to make it clear that he was building a family-friendly establishment.

But the board remained unanimously opposed to his plan, and would probably have succeeded in killing it had he not made a direct appeal to the borough president, who took the unusual step of overriding the community board.

On the opening day, neighbors picketed outside. Queens has the city's largest Asian population, but College Point was still a bastion of working-class whites. It seemed obvious to Chon that his neighbors wanted to keep it that way. Even after it opened, Spa Castle's success was far from assured. But through luck or skill, his timing was good. Between , when the first Spa Castle opened, and , more than 5, new spas opened in North America. In the U. Korean-style spas constitute only a sliver of the U.

In the end, Chon's persistence paid off. Today, about , people crowd into the Queens spa each year, according to the company. Having fulfilled his dream of creating a business that transcends ethnicity, Chon set his sights on ensuring that his business will secure his legacy. I want to leave my name. After his success in Queens and Texas, Chon decided to start a business in Manhattan, an area that hadn't seen many ambitious Korean immigrant entrepreneurs succeed outside of the industries they had traditionally dominated.

In May , after several false starts, he took over the top three floors of the Galleria, a condo building just a few blocks from Central Park. At first, he says, the renovations went smoothly. But in September , just as the project was nearing completion, he got his first taste of the difficulties to come. That's when he learned that the board of the nearby Ritz Tower was suing him and the Galleria's owner.

In a caricature of old-money prudishness, the board fretted that the "nudity-friendly" baths in the gender-segregated areas would violate "public morals. Unfortunately for Chon, the latter complaint carried legal weight. As it turned out, a previous landlord of the Galleria had signed an easement agreement back in promising to never raise the height of the roof without the Ritz's consent.

Chon claims he wasn't aware of this, and argued in his formal response that installing hot tubs was not the same thing as raising the roof's height. Why hadn't the Ritz complained about them? To Chon, the lawsuit smacked of snobbishness and racism. It reminded him of the prostitution rumors that had dogged him in Queens, but, arguably, this situation was worse. Unlike the working-class people and small-business owners who had rallied against him in College Point, the Ritz tenants, on the whole, were wealthy and presumably very well-connected.

Chon says his landlord urged him to back down. Just surrender the roof and move on, he recalled the landlord saying--Chon had no chance against them. Chon barreled ahead anyway. In October, Chon's legal problems multiplied.

A Spa Castle employee had filed a class-action suit accusing Chon of forcing "bath servants" and other employees to work without proper compensation for 11 hours a day, six days a week. It is one of several suits that have been filed against Chon by his employees since