NYC condo boards suing gyms inside their building

Residents in a couple of New York City condos are finding that sharing their homes with commercial gyms is not such a good idea.

Nightclubs underneath, or beside residental condos also can make for sleepless nights and unwelcome disputes.


NYC condo board suing Equinox gym inside their building over loud music played at ‘ear splitting levels’
Daily News
By: Rex Brown

Printing House on Hudson S     Google

Noisy workouts at an Equinox gym have residents of a West Village condo building all worked up.

The condo board of the posh Printing House, on Hudson St. near Clarkson St., sued the gym inside their building, alleging music is played at “ear splitting levels.” The suit charges that bass is set at “full throttle,” causing apartments to shake and tremble.

“Overly eager Equinox class instructors turn up their microphones to their highest volume levels and scream and yell their motivational encouragement,” the suit filed late Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court reads.

The gym signed a lease for the first, ninth and 10th floors of the building in 2010. Workouts take place on the first floor, a pool and showers occupy the upper floors.

In addition to the daily ruckus caused by dropped weights and intense exercise classes with names like “Ripped” and “Whipped,” the pool leaks into the eighth floor, causing mold, court papers charge. The gym even stole the building’s electricity between 2015 and 2016 by tampering with wiring, the suit charges.

A woman who lived on the eighth floor said she only had to deal with leaks in the hallway. But the resident, who declined to give her name, said she was well aware of her neighbors’ struggles.

“A guy went in there (to the gym) with his pajamas one morning and said, ‘I’m not leaving until you turn that down!’ He said it’s obscene in the mornings,” the woman recalled. She added that residents had tried to keep track of which instructors liked to crank the music the loudest.

“There’s quite a few that don’t care,” she said.

Regulars at the upscale chain of gyms with the slogan “It’s not fitness. It’s life,” rolled their eyes at the lawsuit.

“I would file a lawsuit against them about the quality of their music!” Jarrod Heth, 32, joked about the gym’s playlist. “Seems like there’s a lot of whiny people in this building. I don’t see how this place interrupts anybody’s living any more than this busy street ... I can’t imagine anyone living in this building and having a lot to complain about.”

Equinox disputed the suit’s claims, saying it bought the gym six years ago and put close to $10 million into upgrades, and structural and noise issues.

Jeff Weinhaus, the company’s president and chief development officer, said noise complaints have been “very limited.”

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Upper East Side condo to sue Equinox gym over noisy weights, workouts
New York Daily News
By Victoria Bekiempis
27 March 2017,

An Equinox gym on E. 63rd St. near Lexington Ave. might soon be sweating over residents' complaints about noisy weights. (JEFF BACHNER FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

An Equinox gym in a tony Upper East Side condo building might soon be sweating over residents' complaints about noisy weights.

This Equinox outpost, located in the bottom three floors of the ritzy Barbizon 63 tower on E. 63rd St. and Lexington Ave., hasn't done anything to prevent sound from reaching all the way to the fifth floor, the building claimed Monday in a lawsuit.

"Equinox's customer members and trainers regularly and continuously bounce heavy medicine balls on the floors and walls of the gym, to drop or throw weights on the floor and slam weights on the machines," Barbizon's Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit alleges.

"In addition, Equinox members and trainers regularly use the Stereo Equipment throughout the gym, particularly in the fitness studios, at very high volumes and playing music with heavy bass frequencies throughout the day, every day, generally from 6:00 a.m. until 10 p.m."

Residents of the stunning pre-war even commissioned a noise study, which determined that gym sounds could hit 68 decibels in a fourth-floor unit — dramatically more than the city's 10-decibel daytime limit, the suit maintains.

As for the weights, "the bangs are typically 10-15 or more decibels greater than the ambient level."

While residents of Barbizon 63 — where condos now sell from $1.6 to $15 million, according to its website — have complained, Equinox still hasn't turned down the volume, the civil suit charges.

Barbizon wants a judge to make Equinox quieter. They also want Equinox to post a $100,000 surely bond to ensure the gym keeps quiet, as well as unspecified monetary damages.

Barbizon's lawyer and Equinox did not respond to calls for comment.


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