Hackensack planning board to discuss massage establishment ordinance - NorthJersey.com

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Hackensack City Hall(Photo: Tariq Zehawi/Staff Photographer)


HACKENSACK — The planning board is expected to discuss a massage establishment ordinance that, through regulation, would foster legitimate massage therapy practices in the city's central business district and deter massage parlors where prostitution often takes place.

According to planning board secretary Al Borrelli, the ordinance will regulate massage parlors and spas, permitted only as an accessory use in the redevelopment area. Massage parlors and health clubs are currently prohibited in all zone districts in the city.

“There’s no guidelines in town that, not so much police it, but to make sure they’re licensed,” Borrelli said. “That needs to be changed. Or rather, regulations need to be put in place.”

Permitting massage establishments as an accessory use is part of an effort to facilitate and promote therapeutic and leisure businesses in the downtown area. Massage establishments can apply to the area designated as in need of redevelopment.

“This would create a regulatory framework for massage establishments,” said Phil Swibinski, the city spokesman.

Hackensack’s ordinance is expected to be introduced at tomorrow’s planning board meeting. Barring comment or tabling of the ordinance, it will be pushed forward to the City Council for comment and approval. Mayor John Labrosse and Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino also sit on the planning board.

Swibinski said that massage businesses are one of the few types immune to the effects of online shopping and would bring foot traffic to Main Street and new people to the area.

“It’s the kind of business that the city wants, assuming that it’s regulated,” Swibinski said.

The city’s proactive approach to the ordinance is in response to arrests for prostitution at massage parlors throughout Bergen County. Last February, 12 women were arrested at 11 massage parlors in Edgewater, Fairview, Little Ferry, River Edge, Wyckoff and neighboring South Hackensack. In December, an employee at a Wayne massage parlor was arrested for prostitution.

For this reason, Hackensack’s ordinance is modeled after ordinances from Paramus and Wayne, municipalities that have experienced issues with prostitution in massage parlors. The ordinance was drafted through meetings between the health department, building department and planning board attorney Joseph Mecca.

Both municipalities’ ordinances include health regulations such as requiring sterilization plans, covering of genitalia during massages and up to date employee lists. Wayne’s ordinance requires a list of clients.

The reasoning is that through health regulations, the legitimate massage therapy providers will be filtered from the massage parlors where arrests for prostitution take place.

Legitimate massage therapy providers will comply with requirements such as visibly displayed licenses and written sterilization and disinfection plans. Massage parlors will most likely not.

“Basically, what our town did, was craft an ordinance that would allow the health department to regulate these places as they should be,” Wayne Police Detective Sgt. Jay Celentano said. “These are all reasonable things that a legitimate entity would have no problem doing.”

As the commander of Wayne’s Special Operations and Narcotics Unit, Celentano headed criminal investigations into massage parlors where employees had been arrested for engaging in prostitution.

Historically, the method of enforcement was to send in an undercover police officer to get a massage and make an arrest if solicited for prostitution. Celentano said that this would often lead to individual arrests but rarely the shutdown of a business.

Through the regulations listed in Wayne’s ordinance, Sunshine Station Spa, on Hamburg Turnpike, failed several health inspections. After years of closing down and operating under different names and management, it relinquished its license last December.

“Finally, with a criminal investigation and an independent health investigation, we were able to bring closure to this matter,” Celentano said.

Hackensack’s ordinance will take this approach to the issue of massage parlors, focusing on bringing in businesses and ensuring they are legitimate when they apply.

“It’s all about public safety,” Borrelli said. “This gives the city guidelines as to what’s required. Annual inspections. Everything.”

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