Former Murrysville massage parlor may be getting new tenant
A prime commercial lot and building with a checkered past may soon see a new tenant — and new zoning.
The former Tokyo Massage, at the corner of Route 22 and Buena Vista Drive in Murrysville, was the subject of a substantive validity challenge, meaning the new prospective tenant is seeking to have the existing zoning changed.
The lot is zoned as residential property, despite having an entrance directly off Route 22 and a paved parking lot. Other properties on Buena Vista Drive are all residential.
“It’s always been used as a commercial property,” said Murrysville Chief Administrator Jim Morrison.
Its most recent use turned out to be quite unsavory: a little less than a year ago, Hui Xu, a 46-year-old Chinese native who authorities claim ran a string of local massage parlors as fronts for prostitution, pleaded guilty to human trafficking offenses. Xu admitted that workers performed sex acts for clients at her four spa operations — three in Monroeville and the Tokyo Massage Spa in Murrysville.
Prosecutors said women, most of whom were brought to the area from China through a network that ran through Flushing, N.Y., staffed the parlors, where they lived and worked in deplorable conditions.
Attorney Charles Hergenroeder, who represents a local dentist interested in the lot, said the substantive validity challenge was simply to correct a zoning oversight.
“It’s been a real estate office, a tax business, a doctor’s office and chiropractic office. Each of those uses were given an occupancy permit, and we think (the zoning) just fell through the cracks. I think we’re just trying to fix that,” Hergenroeder said. “ Its former use was kind of, well, infamous I suppose, and the use we’re proposing is much better for the municipality.”
Hergenroeder added that he had received an unorthodox request about the former business.
“We did have someone ask if they could have the old sign as memorabilia,” he said.
A public hearing on the potential zoning change will be held at the next council meeting, set for 7 p.m. Dec. 2.
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.
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