After complaints from local massage therapists, Orland Park trustees have tentatively agreed to delete the same-sex requirement in the ordinance regulating businesses that offer massages.
The new ordinance would also be rewritten to omit the word “parlor” in reference to a business that offers massage.
Massage therapists, including Allison Rabka, owner of Skin Therapy Institute in Orland Park, objected to the negative connotation of the term.
“I don’t own a massage parlor,” she said during a meeting this week. “I own a day spa.”
Rabka also asked the Legal, Legislative and Law Enforcement Committee to reconsider the $100 licensing fee that is imposed on each business and each therapist because many therapists work part time in more than one salon.
The committee will rewrite the law and review it at its September meeting. The Village Board will make the final decision.
The law, which was approved in April 1997, was designed to deter vice and prostitution from sneaking in under the massage-therapy business banner. It was prompted by the arrest of prostitutes who had worked out of a LaGrange Road salon.
Maureen McBride, a massage therapist who works at Maria Marr in Orland Park, said she welcomes licensing regulations to maintain professional standards.
“We understand that there has to be an ordinance. But it’s 25 pages and they want us to be fingerprinted. That’s insulting. I feel like a criminal,” she said.
Massage therapist Mary Jo Murray, who works from home, said the same-sex restriction would cost her half of her clients.
The local ordinance defines the act of massage, the physical environment where massage can take place and the minimum educational standards for licensed therapists. It requires male customers to receive treatment only from male therapists and female customers to receive massages only from female therapists. And, among other things, it requires that windows be installed on the doors of rooms where the massage is offered.
Among other requirements, therapists must undergo 500 hours of training, submit to an extensive check of business background and criminal record, be fingerprinted and offer three references.
