Late night hours, blacked out windows, surveillance cameras, and a single neon sign reading “open” or “massage.” More than a dozen such businesses have sprung up within a half-mile radius of downtown Santa Rosa, fueling fears that more is going on behind their locked doors than meets the eye.
Some are featured on erotic massage review websites or classifieds sites, such as Rubmaps, Back Page Gals or Escorts Affair. These sites feature airbrushed sexual images of young women with exclamations such as “New beautiful, sexy and gorgeous Asian girls”.
Overall, the number of massage businesses in Santa Rosa has increased every year since 2021. Citywide, there were 119 businesses categorized as “massage,” “salon” or “spa” at the end of 2023, according to city licensing data.
In the first four months of 2024 alone, at least 97 of those businesses renewed their license or registered as massage businesses for the first time, a city spokesman said. And this is a trend that is expected to continue.
Christina Sunderlage has long noticed massage businesses with hidden entrances and neon signs, but she said there’s been a surge in and around her Midtown neighborhood in the past eight months.
“When I started noticing these other three near Talbot Avenue, that’s when I started noticing all these others that I had never seen before,” she said.
She has identified at least a dozen within a few miles of her home — at least 10 along just a 3/4 mile stretch of Fourth Street.
They also attracted the attention of law enforcement.
“The reality is that most massage parlors are law-abiding businesses,” said Santa Rosa Police Chief John Cregan.
“We certainly have strong suspicions about commercial sex trafficking at some of the massage parlors in the city of Santa Rosa, but further investigative steps must be taken before we can take enforcement action.”
Neighbors have provided police with anecdotal examples of suspicious activity, he said, “but a lot more investigative work is needed to prove criminal activity beyond a reasonable doubt for legal purposes.”
Concerned residents have so far held at least two meetings with massage professionals, experts and law enforcement. They say there is the potential for some of the businesses to be fronts for human trafficking for sex and labor.
The topic will be the focus of Tuesday’s public safety subcommittee meeting.
Community concern
Annette Cooper, real estate agent at Keegan & Coppin Co. Inc. of Santa Rosa, said she has seen more inquiries in the past year from people wanting to open a massage business than ever before.
“In Santa Rosa, you can put them anywhere — it doesn’t have to be just business districts,” she said.
“You can open a business like this with very little capital.”
Curtis Bennett, 56, has seen places with signs offering massages popping up in his neighborhood.
“The business may be legitimate, I don’t know,” he said. “But just as an average Joe walking down the street, it would strike me that the number of businesses outnumbers the demand for legitimate massage.
“So what else is going on?”
The question prompted him to contact Verity, Sonoma County’s only rape treatment center, and the California Massage Therapy Council, or CAMTC, a nonprofit organization that provides certification for massage professionals. He also organized a community meeting on Feb. 14 at the Sonoma County Central Library in Santa Rosa after hearing from many other community members who had noticed what he was seeing.
On Valentine’s night, more than 50 people attended, including Cregan, Santa Rosa Deputy Mayor Mark Stapp and Ahmose Netanel, CEO of the California Massage Therapy Council, who spoke for most of the gathering.
Netanel said he flew in from Los Angeles to be there in part because of the large amount of possible illegal massage businesses in the area.
“We believe between 30 and 40 illegal massage businesses (are) in Santa Rosa,” he told the crowd, based on postings from an erotic massage review website. “For the size of this city, that’s significant.”
During the meeting, people discussed their interactions with these companies. One man living near possible illegal businesses said someone mistook his house for a nearby business, knocked on his door and asked for a massage.
In another case, a woman who said she lives between two businesses — three blocks to the left and three to the right — said she was afraid to let her teenage daughter walk in the area.
