A Marijuana Lounge and Shop on Webster & Haight?

Alameda residents and Webster street businesses who oppose the location of a proposed marijuana dispensary will be raising their concerns at the Mar. 11 Planning Board meeting which begins at 7 pm at city hall. The opponents say that the location is not compatible with the existing neighbors. Immediately next door on the Webster side is a martial arts school which primarily serves children and youth with daily after school classes and tutoring and weekend classes. Over 80 percent of the participants are children. Neighboring the dispensary on the Haight side is the Quba Mosque which practitioners including young children attend daily for prayers.

Within 150 feet of the location are a community Christian church, the farmers market, an art school with after-school programs, and the Pinball Museum. The remainder of Haight street to 8th street is residential.

Concern has been raised about the likelihood of lines queuing up outside, especially on Fridays and weekends, impacting the immediate neighbors as well as the on-site consumption which may result in an increase in impaired driving. As proposed, the marijuana lounge set-up looks like a club or bar setting.

Some merchants have expressed frustration at not having been informed by either the city or the business association as to the proposed location until recently even though the dispensary's proposal received preliminary approval in July 2018. The Planning Board meeting will be their first opportunity to comment despite the business association's support for marijuana businesses at all of the city council hearings since the summer of 2017.

The Planning Board is tasked with finding whether the dispensary's location is compatible with other land uses in the general area and harmonious with the community and surrounding development, and whether it will not it will adversely affect other properties in the vicinity and will not have substantial deleterious effects on existing business districts or the local economy.

Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana, passed by CA voters in 2016, legalized the sale and use of marijuana by adults but gave local cities the authority to decide whether any and which cannabis businesses would be allowed and the authority to regulate how those businesses could operate. Proposition 64 clearly stated that marijuana businesses would be barred from being "located within 600 feet of schools and other areas where children congregate."

Under state law, Business & Professions Code 26054 (b) [a dispensary] "shall not be located within a 600-foot radius of a school providing instruction in kindergarten or any grades 1 through 12, day care center, or youth center that is in existence at the time the license is issued, unless a licensing authority or a local jurisdiction specifies a different radius."

Although Alameda increased the buffer to 1,000 feet and adopted the state's definition for "youth center," in 2017, the council decided to change its definition of youth center to exclude martial arts studios, dance and recreational establishments from the definition in late 2018 after it became apparent that the martial arts school qualified as a "youth center" under the original definition.

The definition was also changed to require the youth centers to "exclusively" serve youth vs. "primarily," while maintaining protections for the recreation and parks centers despite the fact that they do not exclusively serve youth. The stated reason for these changes was to resolve the conflict between a desire by the city to increase the number of locations where dispensaries could be located vs. Alameda's high number of youth focused establishments which are dispersed throughout the city. It is ironic that what is considered a community benefit, i.e., many places for children and families in the city becomes an obstacle to allowing recreational marijuana sales.

For the purposes of the cannabis ordinance, all martial arts, dance, cultural and other recreational schools and uses like the AquaTech Swim School and the IOOF Fencing school, were removed from buffer zone protections under the amended ordinance.

The March 11 Staff Report with attachments to the Planning Commission, can be found here: https://alameda.legistar.com/L...

Comments to the Planning Commission regarding the Webster street location may be sent to:

Nancy McPeak, Executive Assistant, Community Development Department, nmcpeak@alamedaca.gov

(510) 747-6854