ORANGE, Calif. — AJ Ricci has lived in Orange his entire life and helps to run his family’s business, Ricci Reality. 

“Here in Orange a lot of what we do is in the city of Orange but specifically in the downtown area, we will do everything from commercial, residential, leasing, sales. We are just kind of a one-stop shop,” he said.

Ricci said his company has no problem filling residential, retail, and restaurant properties, but since the pandemic, he has trouble renting out office spaces. 

“It is really, really difficult to fill them. They tend to stay on the market longer than I would like,” he said.

Ricci added that many of the empty office spaces end up being targets for questionable massage parlors. 

“We typically advise our clients to be very wary of accepting these massage businesses, and sometimes they will offer more rent than what we are advertising because they know they are having a difficult time,” he said. 

While speaking about two separate office spaces in downtown Orange, Ricci said they have both received 11 calls each from massage parlors looking to rent the spaces. 

“There are legitimate businesses that do physical therapy specifically for like sports medicine, they are usually well organized and they can show us their business plan very clearly but then there are a lot that can’t, that just say, I do massages when can we start,” he said.

Ricci noted that many realtors will allow illicit massage parlors to come in and rent out a space, despite concerns of business practices. 

“When they come in with these attractive offers of not needing much tenant improvements on the inside and offering to pay more than what someone is advertising, I can see people taking the money,” said Ricci. 

On May 26, the city of Orange voted to put a 45-day moratorium on approving massage parlor permits, and in late June, the city voted to extend that moratorium for two years. 

Orange Mayor Dan Slater said the city of Orange currently has 90 massage parlors. 

“Unfortunately, there is quite a few of them that are doing illegal activity, and our city council is saying that is going to stop,” said Mayor Slater.  

Mayor Slater said these facilities have been caught dealing drugs, hosting illegal gambling, and charged with human trafficking. 

Many other cities throughout Orange County, like Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, and Stanton, have already put laws in place to restrict these types of businesses.  

Public Safety Services Director Jim Wren said the City of Stanton used to have an issue with massage parlors, but over the years, his team has worked to change that.

“A three square mile city at one point, we actually had 37 massage establishments,” he said. 

Wren explained that it’s impossible for the city to monitor that many massage parlors with the resources that exist in the city. 

“You are never going to get the sheriff’s department to run regular operations or even operations based on request at 37 locations,” said Wren. 

The city of Stanton first put a moratorium on massage parlors in 2019. 

Wren said the first step in being able to manage the massage parlors was dealing with the concentration. The second step was putting zoning ordinances in place. 

“The concentration thing was one of the most effective things we did, where they can’t be within five hundred feet of another location,” he said.

Since the city of Stanton started enforcing stricter laws around massage parlors, there are now only eight establishments. 

“A lot of them got timed out from a zoning standpoint, so it was not that they were doing anything illegal at all,” said Wren. 

Ricci and his family are doing what they can to keep these illicit businesses out of their city, and he said he’s happy the city is playing its part as well. 

“Now that has come out, now that those guys are on notice, they will just have to jump to another city that has not experienced or recognized the same issue,” he said.