Recreational pot becomes legal in California on Jan. 1, and Palm Springs is ready for it.
The
city council passed a sweeping new ordinance creating a framework for
the growing and selling of adult use marijuana in the city, including
social spaces for people to smoke or consume edibles.
The
council voted 4-1 on Wednesday to adopt the ordinance. Council member
Chris Mills, who has routinely voted against marijuana-related measures,
cast the no vote.
“Prohibition is over,” Council member Geoff Kors said after the vote.
The
regulations allow for the establishment of cannabis lounges, places
where recreational pot can be consumed on site. Lounges will be allowed
in all commercial and manufacturing areas, with the exception of
industrial zones and the airport.
The lounges will
operate like cannabis bars, where pot can be sold and consumed on site.
Patrons who don’t smoke–or eat–everything they buy can bring home their
leftovers in a doggy bag.
Medical
and recreational dispensaries will be required to undergo a review by
the Architectural Advisory Committee and Planning Commission, but will
not need to obtain any special permits.
Dispensaries will be allowed in
any commercial or manufacturing area, including the airport, with the
exception of industrial zoned land.
Mills said he
didn’t understand why dispensaries or lounges would have to undergo an
architectural review process if they were moving into existing buildings
and weren’t doing major renovations since other establishments, like
bars, didn’t have to undergo review in similar circumstances.
“What
I would hate to have happen, is because they’re a dispensary, and you
have storefront after storefront after storefront in the same building,
and they’re held to a different standard” he said.
Council member J.R. Roberts said lounges should be treated like bars, except when it comes to monitoring the aesthetics.
“These
places just tend to look bad as a rule,” he said, adding some owners
made an effort to beautify dispensaries, but many didn't fit in with the
city's overall aesthetic environment.
Stand-alone
lounges–ones that offer no services except the ability to buy and
consume cannabis products on site–will have to undergo a longer and more
expensive process to obtain conditional use permits. However, lounges
that also offer food, or are part of a yoga studio, art gallery or other
type of business, will not be required to do so.
All
cultivation, manufacturing and and testing facilities will also be
required to obtain CUPs. These facilities will be allowed in
manufacturing and commercial manufacturing, industrial and research park
zones, as will transportation and distribution facilities.
All
cultivation, manufacturing and and testing facilities will be required
to obtain conditional use permits, a longer and more expensive process.
These facilities will be allowed in manufacturing and commercial
manufacturing, industrial and research park zones, as will
transportation and distribution facilities.
The
regulations follow some of the suggestions made by residents and
dispensary owners at a meeting with the city council cannabis
subcommittee last month, but some industry members were not satisfied.
Jim
Camper of Organic Solutions of the Desert said the valley had already
become oversaturated with medical cannabis businesses and allowing the
industry to expand further could be detrimental for the six dispensaries
currently open in the city.
“I think it’s honestly a mistake to go ahead and do this so quickly, with recreational not even here yet,” he said.
In
an attempt to prevent oversaturation, dispensaries not in manufacturing
zones cannot be within 1,000 feet of another dispensary, or 2,000 feet
in downtown or the uptown design district. Planning Director Flinn Fagg
said that means there could be a maximum of five dispensaries in the
areas.
Cannabis businesses not in downtown or
uptown must be at least 250 feet from any residential area and 600 to
1,000 feet from schools, public parks and daycare centers, depending on
the type of facility.
Robert Van Roo of Palm
Springs Safe Access said the six medical license holders had asked the
city to give them priority processing for recreational licenses through
the end of 2018, something he said California was doing with state
licenses.
Desert
Hot Springs took similar steps as Palm Springs last month, unanimously
passing an ordinance to expand the city’s marijuana-related ordinances
beyond medical use.
“Pretty much what the ordinance
does is allows for adult-use marijuana as well as medical-use marijuana
in the city,” City Attorney Jennifer Mizrahi said at the time.
Related: 'Bud and Breakfast'? Desert Hot Springs spa trying to make pot tourism experience happen
The
measure also included a provision that would have allowed for micro
business licenses–generally described as all-inclusive permits which
allow facilities of less than 10,000 square feet to cultivate,
manufacture and distribute marijuana products.
Council
members said they wanted a more specific definition of “micro
business,” and needed more discussion regarding what types of micro
businesses the city wanted to allow before moving forward.
The council
passed the adult-use ordinance, but tabled the discussion of micro
businesses for a later meeting.
Council member
Russell Betts said since the council had started regulating medical
marijuana about five years ago, the body had always envisioned
recreational use would someday be legalized.
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