Tattoo and massage parlors in Palm Desert to be targeted in public hearing

Palm Desert officials could soon be sending out a message to tattoo, massage and second-hand businesses in the city: Stay off Highway 111 and El Paseo.

The Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. today at City Hall on a proposed ordinance making the city's key retail corridors off limits for these and other types of businesses deemed inappropriate — fortune tellers, bail bonds companies, pool halls and smoke shops.

Such businesses “do not contribute to the positive development or economic vitality of Highway 111 and El Paseo and are antithetical to the core economic interests of the city,” the proposed law says.

The five tattoo parlors, eight massage businesses, one palm reader and three smoke shops currently on Highway 111 and El Paseo would be grandfathered in under the proposed law, a staff report says.

The commission will also hold a public hearing on revisions to the city's hillside development ordinance, prohibiting development on or across rock outcroppings.

The city already bans development on hillside ridge lines. The proposed law defines outcroppings as “a rock formation that is a part of an underlying layer of rock, that projects above the surface of the surrounding ground.”