South Pasadena Moms Brainstorm Ways to Stem Massage Parlor Proliferation

It’s almost a fundamental tenet of community life that the choices people make directly affect their health and happiness.

Take Hawaii. The fourth smallest state in the nation was recently ranked the healthiest, according to America’s Health Rankings. Hawaii unseated Vermont, consistently among the top five healthiest states for the past decade. The Aloha state’s high rates of childhood immunization and low rates of obesity, smoking and preventable hospitalization were key factors in its top placing.

Clearly, somewhere along Hawaii’s road to becoming the nation’s healthiest state, its people decided to make healthy life choices. How those choices were made is less obvious, but it’s entirely possible that it all began with a group of Hawaiians who shared a vision and worked hard to turn it into reality.

I was reminded of Hawaii when I attended a public meeting this past week hosted by Moms For Family and Community, a relatively new homegrown group of South Pasadena moms whose name and mission statement are perfectly aligned.

Held in the South Pasadena Library Community Room on Dec. 17, the meeting had a two-point agenda: First, to discuss ways to get the city's elected officials to stop more massage establishments from opening in South Pasadena. (The city already has 14 massage establishments, according to City Hall figures.) And second, to encourage a diversity of new family friendly business inclined to support the community.

Last month, Moms For Family and Community urged the South Pasadena City Council to help avert the possibility that the city’s 15th massage parlor will open at the Fair Oaks location of the current Blockbuster store, which is scheduled to close in January. 

South Pasadena needs businesses that support its residents’ values, Lisa Boyd, an MFC representative told the council.

“We want our community to start waking up to what the situation is here, and say Enough is enough,” Boyd said at the start of last week’s meeting. “There’s a lot of people who feel the same way. Can we come together and make some change?” 

Initially, the meeting consisted of 12 people, including two men and three children. No sooner had they begun to gather in a circle around a table than City Manager Sergio Gonzalez walked in. Minutes later, two other city officials entered—Councilmember Bob Joe, followed by Councilmember Marina Khubesrian, who was elected South Pasadena’s mayor the following day.

The discussion got off to a somewhat testy start. “King Spa closed for just four days,” said Kelly Conte, referring to a Huntington Drive massage parlor whose owner was charged on suspicion of prostitution in 2012 but who was not prosecuted and his business license not revoked. “King Spa right now is next to a Starbucks, where kids hang out.”

A dad who was present at the meeting along with his daughter chimed in: “As a parent, I’m concerned that it’s perhaps a seedy element,” he said, referring to massage parlors in general. “However, that can’t be the argument [because] it seems like you’re attacking one industry. So maybe that’s not a plan of attack.”

Countered Conte: “Businesses that are in violation of the law, though, that’s when cities take action.” Huntington Beach, she added, has gone from having five massage establishments to as many as 69 over a period of just three years. “Within a few years, that could happen in South Pas.”

Alhambra, meanwhile, has only six massage businesses, Boyd said, prompting another mom to say that San Marino has just one. (Evidently, landlords and real estate brokers in San Marino are unwilling to rent stores to massage establishments, according to Gonzalez.)

“We are between the 110 and the 710 and we get 35,000 cars a day going up and down Fair Oaks,” Boyd continued, alluding to the thoroughfare’s potential customer base for massage businesses.

Having a diversity of businesses in South Pasadena may be an obvious and desirable goal, but one arguably not grounded in reality, one of the event’s organizers, a mom identified only as Amy proposed.

“We talked to a lot of businesses around here and a lot of them said that they did not want to open businesses on Fair Oaks because their main fears are that it’s not nice looking and they are afraid of massage parlors opening next door to them,” she said.

“We also heard that a lot of people who own buildings [on Fair Oaks] will lease it to them [massage establishments] because they have the money and because they get their permits faster for some reason,” she added.

Gail Maltun, a South Pas resident, linked the proliferation of massage establishments to what she said was the lack of a vibrant Downtown along Fair Oaks. 

“We talk about this delightful street from the freeway down to Monterey Road, but it does not exist,” she said. “We have had an absolute failure of civic leadership on downtown South Pasadena. If we want a lively downtown we have to create the conditions for it.”

For example, said Maltun, there’s just one-hour parking on Fair Oaks. “If you get your nails done, do you have a chance to go the bakery down the street?"

Conte pointed out that much of the relatively new development on Fair Oaks was done just before financial markets crashed in 2008, and landlords would rather rent to massage parlors than see their storefronts sitting empty.

Ron Rosen, a retired lawyer and longtime South Pas resident, asked what the “dynamic” was behind the proliferation of massage parlors across the county—and he directed his question to Helen McDonagh, the one person at the meeting who was actually from the massage industry.

McDonagh is the Los Angeles regional developer for Massage Envy, a nationwide massage spa franchise scheduled to open a large store in the space recently vacated by Out of the Closet. McDonagh replied that she has no idea what goes on inside a typical massage parlor. What she does know is that Massage Envy provides 56,000 therapeutic massages nationwide on a daily basis and that “when we come in[to a city], those places [dubious parlors] generally don’t survive.”

McDonagh did get an idea, however, of what goes on in an average massage parlor when she approached the City of Glendale before opening her own franchise on Brand Boulevard in Glendale in 2005.

“I’ll tell you, the city was not happy,” McDonagh said. “I might as well have a walked in and said, Hi, I’m Heidi Fleiss and I’m here to open my brothel.”

Shortly after her Glendale franchise opened, said McDonagh, a chiropractic and acupuncture store in Montrose was busted for prostitution. “So these weren’t even massage parlors,” she added, implying just how tangled and deep the roots are of the world’s oldest profession.

“This is a huge topic,” City Manager Gonzalez said, offering a short history of the massage industry and its effect on South Pasadena.

“Unfortunately we got the brunt of the economy here,” Gonzalez began, going on to explain why the South Pasadena City Council tried but failed to regulate massage establishments by instituting Conditional Use Permits for the businesses. And the reason the council failed, Gonzalez said, has to do with the state law (SB 731) that governs the massage industry and treats massage therapists as professionals rather than service providers. 

Bottom line: If the South Pasadena City Council were to demand that massage establishments meet the CUP requirement, the same condition would have to apply to other professionals such as doctors, lawyers, dentists and accountants, Gonzalez said. 

What’s more, cities such as South Pasadena spend substantial sums of money every year on administering their own tests, conducting background checks and verifying the credentials of state-certified massage therapists. 

“The question is, why should local cities like us have to incur all this cost because of a state law,” said Gonzalez. “Why should we be spending $50,000 to $70,000 a year [monitoring massage establishments]—why can’t we put that money in renovations, senior services? Why does the state put that burden on us, just like it does with [retrenched] prisoners?”

The good news, said the city manager, is that South Pasadena Police Department Chief Art Miller was recently chosen to represent police chiefs from across the state on the board of the California Massage Therapy Council, which certifies massage therapists and engages in massive lobbying in Sacramento. 

“This is the evil empire—and now we get to be on the governing board of the evil empire,” said Gonzalez. “But it’s better to be on the inside.”

One option, said Conte, is to “make it not financially viable” for massage establishments to operate. “This is a more severe tactic, but to protest in front of the establishments and to make people aware—a lot of people are not aware that King Spa has prostitution issues.”

Councilmember Joe assured the meeting that he and his colleagues on the council share the public’s concerns that “there’s not enough being done” about massage parlors. “Dr. Marina and I are on an ad-hoc committee, with the city staff, on massage parlors. And I think that both of us need to—I hate to use the term—kick a little bit more ass to our staff to move on some of these things.”

And while the city council does want to make it harder for massage parlors to operate—by ordering them to close by 9 p.m., for example—the city needs at the same time to work in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not a one-dimensional decision.”

Joe also said that he is skeptical that anything will come of the ostensible efforts of state Assemblymember Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), with whom city staff is liaising, to forge legislation to restore local control over the massage industry. Instead, it seems more promising for the city to liaise with state Senator Carol Liu’s office, said Joe. “I feel they want to get involved and want to help with legislation.”

Moreover, added Joe, he and Mayor Khubesrian are scheduled to meet with state Assemblymember Eric Holder (D-Pasadena) soon. “When we go to meet Holden, I would love to have a petition with as many signature on it as possible,” the councilmember said. 

“The point of all this is to get them all to understand that we have a problem, and we want it solved.” 

City Manager Gonzalez agreed that the council is ready to take a lead on the issue of massage establishments both by pushing for state legislation as well as doing what can be lawfully done to regulate massage businesses on the local level. 

“We’re a small city but we do big things,” Gonzalez said.

Related: City Manager: We Cannot Regulate Massage Establishments Differently