By Doug Curlee | Editor at Large
The city Planning Commission is the body that must hear appeals of Planning Department decisions about who should be approved to open medical marijuana consumer cooperatives.
But a number of commissioners are now saying the rules need to be changed, perhaps triggering a review of the whole process.
At issue immediately is the fact that the process seems to be a first-come, first-served system that may cause much better applicants to be denied approval simply because others got there first.
There is also considerable dissatisfaction about rules that disqualify applicants based on the geographic location of their proposed cooperative.
City Council District 7 is a prime example.
Four applicants for permits to open medical marijuana cooperatives in the Grantville area have apparently fallen afoul of a provision in the law that forbids such co-ops from operating within a thousand feet of a parks, churches, schools and other minor-oriented facilities.
Grantville Green at 4410 Glacier St., Living Green at 4417 Rainier Ave., SDUG, Inc. next door at 4427 Rainier Ave., and Green Tree Holistic at 5959 Mission Gorge Road are all less than 1,000 feet from the Mission Valley riparian area, which makes them ineligible for a permit to operate, at least at those locations.
The Mission Valley riparian area is an expanse of undeveloped land along the San Diego River in Grantville. Though there is no public access to the area, it is considered dedicated parkland, and therefore off-limits to them. Whether or not the riparian areas will ever actually become a park is debatable at best, but city staff say it qualifies as a park under the city’s medical marijuana consumer cooperative ordinance.
Alicia Darrow is a San Francisco-based cooperative owner who’s somewhere in the process for approval, but may be stuck there because of the riparian issue.
“We’re just trying to keep hacking away at it, and see where we can go,” Darrow says. “It’s really frustrating, because we run first-class operations here in San Francisco and Oakland. Our Rainier location is almost outside that riparian zone, but those are the rules right now.”
Asked if there is a possibility that an individual or a group might go to court to challenge that 1,000-foot limit, Darrow replied, “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is looking at that.”
Ron Miller of Grantville Green wants to open a very small dispensary at 4410 Glacier Ave., also near the riparian area.
“We don’t really want to open a full-scale dispensary like others do,” Miller said. “Our proposed facility is only 634 square feet. We are interested in strictly the medicinal value of the oils that can be extracted and used for the benefit of people ill with cancer or AIDS-related problems. We’re not interested in hundreds of people showing up with pot ‘recommendations’ so they can party hearty for the weekend. That’s not the market we’re after at all.”
Some planning commissioners want a workshop in the very near future, where changes to the laws regarding the process can be seriously reviewed and changed.
First-come, first served applications are a target of some planning commissioners. One cooperative approved last week in Council District 6 won because it was the first in line in the process.
“I wish this would have been a beauty contest, because the sixth applicant was by far the best,” said Commissioner Theresa Quiroz.
All of this could end up creating a logjam in court someday fairly soon, though, if changes in the overall process are approved at this late date.
If there are proposed changes in the process, they would have to be approved by the City Council, and the council may not be at all anxious to reopen that can of worms.
As it stands, the law allows a maximum of 36 cooperatives in the city — four in each of the nine council districts. Nine have been approved, none in our District 7, and the feeling is that the city would be happy to see no more than 11 to 14 citywide.
This won’t go away anytime soon.
—Write to Doug Curlee at [email protected].
