City Council OKs extended hours for massage business

Las Vegas leaders have been willing to drop the ax on certain massage businesses on Paradise Road near the Strip, but one such operation escaped that fate Wednesday and, in fact, will be allowed to stay open into the wee hours.

Princess Massage near Paradise and Sahara Avenue has been struggling since its hours were cut to 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., down from a 24-hour operation, owner Douglas Wingo said.

And he argued that the cause of that reduction, the arrests of his wife, former parlor manager Yumin Han Wingo, on prostitution solicitation charges, was "bogus."

She had one conviction on those charges in 2007, according to city records.

Mayor Pro Tem Gary Reese, who represents that part of town, said Douglas Wingo has managed the business well since those incidents and gave him what he wanted: permission to be open from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m.

Las Vegas City Council members voted 6-1 in favor, with Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian voting no. She did not explain her vote.

Two other massage businesses just up the street are open 24 hours a day.

"He had a problem over there," Reese said. "I didn't have any problem giving it to him today because we haven't had any calls for service.

"It's pretty hard to say, 'No, I can't give it to you' when you've got two stores on the same block that are open 24 hours a day," the councilman said.

There used to be two more.

Council members shut down Sunflower Massage in July 2008 in the aftermath of three prostitution arrests. The business was supposed to close while the cases went through the system, but police found that it was open during the moratorium period.

Tranquility Spa suffered the same fate. It was licensed as a place for such services as body wraps and waxing, but an investigation found unauthorized massages being offered under the guise of "relaxing body rubs."

It is a situation that has long vexed officials, residents and business operators in the area.

The massage parlors contribute to what is seen as the seediness of a street that's one of the gateways into the city of Las Vegas from the Strip. Massage businesses can and often are operated legally across the metropolitan area.

It's a business that can have strange hours, Wingo stated in a letter to council members.

"By closing so early, we miss getting the late-show people and club people and all the late-shift workers who need the massage to unwind so they can sleep when they get home," Wingo said of the 11 p.m. closing time. "We lose almost one-fourth to one-third of our business by closing before 3 a.m."

Clark County changed its code in 2008 to require any new stand-alone massage business to be open only from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., with location restrictions as well.

If Las Vegas did something similar, it wouldn't affect the businesses on Paradise that are already open. And it's better to have businesses than empty buildings, Reese said.

"I have allowed these, and I've turned down others," he said. "These are all we're going to have on that corridor there."