Tanning Salons Feeling the Heat of Possible Ban

Prompted by charges that some new tanning salons in Newport Beach may be fronts for prostitution rings, the City Council today will consider an emergency ordinance that would temporarily prohibit any new such businesses that offer live entertainment.

The city proposed a 45-day freeze after it received an application for a tanning salon that planned live lingerie shows. Officials want to investigate the business’s operations before granting a license.

The proposed ban comes in response to location shifts in prostitution that have come about since the city’s moratorium earlier this year on new massage parlors. More than half of the city’s massage shops are believed to house prostitutes, according to police.

“We didn’t have adequate regulations to deal with the potential problems,” said Glen Everroad, the city’s revenue manager, explaining why an emergency ordinance is necessary. “We will always be one step behind this process because we cannot anticipate where they will go next.”

Information received from other cities has led Newport’s business licensing department to conclude that prostitution rings often shift from one type of front business to another, he added.

The Police Department has long been investigating the city’s massage parlors but has not targeted existing tanning salons because there has been no evidence of prostitution in those establishments, Police Lt. Tim Newman said. However, he added, new tanning shops may be setting up specifically to circumvent the curb on new massage parlors.

“The Police Department has no concerns with those existing (tanning) salons. We’re concerned about those that are masquerading,” Newman said.

“We believe that once those moratoriums were in place, the acts that were occurring in those businesses might start occurring (elsewhere). . . . There will be other entrepreneurial efforts that (prostitution rings) will undertake to circumvent the planning and zoning laws that the city may enact.”

Operators of tanning shops in the city criticized the proposal. They said that it would unfairly taint their businesses and argued that proposed restrictions on massage shops--such as regulating where they can operate--unfairly punishes legitimate business people.

“I understand what they’re trying to do and I agree with what they’re trying to do, but I don’t agree with how they’re trying to do it,” said Robert Burns, president of Shape Up Newport, one of two tanning shops in Newport Beach. “It won’t stop prostitution. It’ll just move it.”

If approved, the emergency ordinance would be the third city regulation this year geared to limit businesses, following the massage parlor moratorium and an ordinance requiring use permits for shops that sell sex toys.

Since the massage parlor ban went into effect, the city has received a number of applications from businesses whose operations may be sex-related, Everroad said.

Rather than continue a piecemeal prohibition of questionable shops, Everroad said the city is looking into a long-term plan to regulate these businesses and is considering revamping its adult entertainment ordinance.