Ocala, FL Business Licensing & Operations: Massage Establishments (2026)

Section 10-79 sits inside Chapter 10's adult-use article, right after the city's parallel disclaimer on obscenity in § 10-78, and it was adopted by the same 1995 ordinance, Ord. No. 2513, § 6, on March 21, 1995. It has not been amended since. The section is a single, deliberate sentence: the city council does not intend to legislate with respect to matters of massage establishments because that authority already sits with a state agency, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, acting through its Board of Massage under Florida Statutes Chapter 480.

Practically, that means Growth Management, Building Safety and the Ocala Police Department run no separate massage establishment permit, inspection or licensing program the way the city does for adult use establishments in the same chapter. A massage business opening in the City of Ocala answers to the state licensing board for the therapist's and establishment's credentials, complaint investigation and discipline rather than to a city board or the building department. The city has not carved out any zoning-specific massage category either; a massage practice is treated like any other permitted use under the applicable zoning district in Chapter 122, and any general business tax obligations that apply to commercial occupants citywide apply here too.

Because § 10-79 is a disclaimer rather than a regulatory scheme, there is no local license fee, inspection schedule, hours-of-operation limit or spacing requirement written into the municipal code for massage establishments, unlike the licensing and 500-foot spacing rules the city imposes on adult use establishments a few sections later in the same chapter.