Newport Beach : City May Try 45-Day Ban on New Massage Parlors

An increase in prostitution arrests has prompted the City Council to consider a 45-day ban on issuing new permits for massage parlors while the city considers zoning changes that would restrict the number of new parlors.

The council Monday night will vote on whether to enact the emergency ordinance, the result of a dozen arrests made by police last month in a citywide undercover sweep of massage parlors.

There are 32 massage parlor permits in Newport Beach, and five new applications are under consideration.

Bob Hardy, a police spokesman, said vice officers arrested the prostitution suspects in a series of raids made on establishments with records of employing prostitutes. “We hit a bunch of our prior problem massage parlors,” he said. Several arrests were made at parlors in the immediate vicinity of John Wayne Airport, which Hardy said has the city’s largest concentration of massage parlors.

City Atty. Robert Burnham said the moratorium would not affect massage parlors that are already operating but would prevent new ones from being established within the 45-day waiting period.

Burnham said possible zoning changes could include provisions to limit concentration of parlors in various sections of the city, a limit on the zones in which they would be permitted to operate or ordinances to keep the establishments away from schools and churches. A fourth option, he said, is to make no change. The city is studying massage parlor ordinances in other Orange County cities to see if they can be adapted to Newport Beach, he said.