New Massage Parlor Raises Some Eyebrows

Borough Administrator Sharon McCullough chuckled(correction) Thursday afternoon while examining the brochure of a new local business that has some residents and officials concerned.

“Corn therapy?” she said.  “I’ve heard of hot stone, but I’ve never heard of hot corn therapy.”

The “Healing Stone/Corn Therapy, a pre-heated herbal process…to transmit heat smoothly and deeply into muscles,” is just one of several services offered at the Chinese Tai Ji Center, a new business scheduled to open next week at 144 Kings Highway East.

Some neighbors have been burning up local chat rooms like Haddonfield Talks in recent weeks with concerns about a “wink-wink, massage parlor.”

“There was a lot of concern when it first came out,” McCullough said. “A lot of the rumors were unfounded.”

Unfounded rumors or not, this week the commissioners considered changes to local ordinances to rein-in personal services businesses like massage parlors.

“What we’re looking at is if some clarification of the land-use ordinance makes sense,” said Ed Borden, a borough commissioner and planning board member. “We’re looking at what would be an appropriate mix for businesses in the Kings Highway corridor. We’re looking at if there ought to be uses in the Kings Highway corridor that should be discouraged.”

Borden said the planning board has formed a subcommittee to look into more restrictive zoning along the borough’s main business district. John LaProcido, chairman of the borough planning board, updated Borden and Haddonfield’s other two commissioners this week on the subcommittee. They spoke of new rules that could require some personal service workers, such as in massage and nail salons, to be professionally licensed to work in Haddonfield.

Meanwhile, a short stroll down Kings Highway from Borough Hall, the smell of fresh paint wafted out a propped-open front door at 144 Kings Highway East, the location of the new Chinese Tai Ji massage center. One of the workers, Gordon Mei, welcomed a reporter inside.

“There’s definitely not going to be anything inappropriate happening here,” said Mei. “It’s not just going to be girls working here. There’s also going to be gentlemen working here.”

Borough officials said the massage shop proprietor, Ping Lu, has planning board approval to open. Officials said that while some business use can be banned in certain locations, a lawful business cannot be banned outright from a town.

Mei said Lu was not at the shop on Thursday afternoon, but agreed to give a visitor a brief tour. He pointed to narrow rooms down a long corridor, separated by 6-and-a-half-foot, sheetrock walls. The walls act as partitions but don’t reach to the ceiling, leaving several feet of exposed vertical space in each room. He said it would be hard to conceal anything inappropriate in such a design.

Back outside, Jerry Yale, 86, a retiree from Cherry Hill strolled by.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“New businesses are always welcome in towns,” said Yale, who said he enjoys taking strolls along Kings Highway. His attitude changed when concerns about the business were explained.

“Oh, they’re concerned about hanky-panky,” he said. “'Course, I think the police department can regulate that.”

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