{"id":224466,"date":"2017-08-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/pot-businesses-want-to-relocate-day-cares\/"},"modified":"2017-08-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T07:00:00","slug":"pot-businesses-want-to-relocate-day-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/pot-businesses-want-to-relocate-day-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"Pot businesses want to relocate day cares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Kinsee Morlan<\/a><\/p>\n

Day care centers in La Mesa and Lemon Grove have been getting some strange offers. Marijuana entrepreneurs have been knocking on their doors, offering the owners money and other deals to either relocate or shut down.<\/p>\n

Last year, residents in\u00a0both cities<\/a>\u00a0voted to allow medical marijuana dispensaries. But the measures prohibit dispensaries from being too close to places like schools, churches, public parks and day care centers.<\/p>\n

\"Pot<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out that\u2019s more restrictive than you might realize \u2014 small, in-home day care centers are all over the place. In small cities like Lemon Grove, there aren\u2019t many properties that are more than 1,000 feet away from one.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a problem as a green rush envelops the state, with entrepreneurs rushing to scoop up real estate to cash in on the booming marijuana business.<\/p>\n

Voters approved Proposition 64 last year, clearing the way for recreational marijuana in the state in 2018, but the law\u00a0left regulating the industry up to local municipalities<\/a>. Some cities and counties looking to\u00a0reap the economic benefits<\/a>\u00a0of legal pot are\u00a0passing new ordinances and regulations<\/a>\u00a0to help pot people navigate laws and figure out exactly where they can open up shop. Others\u00a0haven\u2019t shown the same excitement.<\/a><\/p>\n

The slow roll-out of regulations has left would-be pot business owners champing at the bit for commercial property in cities like La Mesa and Lemon Grove that have spelled out clear rules.<\/p>\n

Finding space for a legal dispensary is made even more challenging because of a state law that mandates the addresses of in-home day cares be kept confidential to protect people\u2019s privacy. The issue has led Lemon Grove city officials to create\u00a0a wacky, barely readable medical marijuana zoning map<\/a>\u00a0that obscures the more than 70 in-home day care addresses by putting pink blobs around exact locations, but also makes it hard to figure out where dispensaries are actually allowed.<\/p>\n

Lemon Grove and La Mesa started accepting medical marijuana dispensary applications in March. Neither city has yet to approve a single application.<\/p>\n

Business owners submitted 17 applications for medical marijuana dispensaries in Lemon Grove, but just three are advancing toward approval. The rest of the applications were denied, mostly because they were too close to in-home day care centers. Four of those denials have been appealed, and one\u00a0was upheld by the Lemon Grove City Council last month<\/a>. The other three are scheduled to make their cases in front of the City Council on Aug. 15.<\/p>\n

Some marijuana entrepreneurs have taken the issue into their own hands, hitting the streets to find small day care centers to try and make deals. One day care provider, in a letter to the city of Lemon Grove,\u00a0gave a detailed account<\/a>\u00a0of her bizarre interactions with a medical marijuana dispensary owner who wanted her to move her business in exchange for money and things like tickets to the San Diego County Fair.<\/p>\n

La Mesa has a\u00a0better zoning map<\/a>\u00a0that makes it easier to find places where dispensaries are allowed while keeping day care addresses confidential. Business owners have submitted about 25 applications for medical marijuana facilities there, all of which are still waiting for decisions from the city\u2019s planning commission.<\/p>\n

Carol Dick, who oversees development in La Mesa, said the city\u2019s 60 in-home day cares haven\u2019t caused much of an issue, though a few entrepreneurs have used the city\u2019s zoning map to guess the locations of day cares. They then make the owners offers to move or close so they can open up a dispensary nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few of these folks have worked with them and accepted the offers and the businesses have disappeared,\u201d Dick said. \u201cThen we\u2019ll get a document from these day cares that they\u2019re no longer in business \u2014 that\u2019s happened a few times already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gina Austin, an attorney who represents clients trying to open dispensaries in the San Diego region, said La Mesa has a better system, but Lemon Grove is making things pretty difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir map is a big, vague blob, so it\u2019s too hard to make sense of,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n

She said Lemon Grove city officials have also failed to take barriers, like walls and hills, into account, even though the voter-approved measure requires that they do. She said she has clients whose proposed locations in Lemon Grove have clear barriers blocking access and visibility to nearby in-home day cares and churches.<\/p>\n

At the August City Council meeting, she\u2019ll be asking council members to redo the zoning map to include barriers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re asking and we\u2019ve been asking for from day one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lemon Grove City Councilman Jerry Jones said the size and geography of the city is partly to blame for the difficulty finding appropriate places to locate marijuana dispensaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything in our business district is close to a residential area, and it\u2019s really long and narrow so there\u2019s not a lot of depth,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that 1,000 square feet becomes problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said he recognized that at least a few of the denied applications, especially one proposed for a building at the edge of town near a strip club, need to be re-examined.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen that appeal comes before us, I\u2019ll take a closer look at it,\u201d he said. \u201cI really need to work with staff on how they\u2019re drawing lines and we\u2019ll figure this stuff out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin said she\u2019s been getting an influx of calls asking her to help clients find suitable locations for marijuana businesses. If Lemon Grove takes too much longer to straighten things out, it\u2019ll miss a potential economic boom, she said.<\/p>\n

\"Pot<\/a>\u201cOnce other cities with more robust regulations come online, there won\u2019t be any reason to go to Lemon Grove,\u201d she said. \u201cThe cities that get this right are poised to benefit majorly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Kinsee Morlan is the Engagement Editor at Voice of San Diego and author of the Culture Report. Contact her directly at\u00a0<\/em>kinsee.morlan@voiceofsandiego.org<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kinsee Morlan Day care centers in La Mesa and Lemon Grove have been getting some strange offers. Marijuana entrepreneurs have been knocking on their doors, offering the owners money and other deals to either relocate or shut down. Last year, residents in\u00a0both cities\u00a0voted to allow medical marijuana dispensaries. But the measures prohibit dispensaries from […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":224467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"Pot businesses want to relocate day cares","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}