In April of 2021, Grand Junction residents voted on a measure that would allow for retail marijuana dispensaries to be licensed within their city limits. The measure was approved, as the community saw the need for benefits that retail marijuana businesses can bring to a city, like revenue for the Parks and Recreation Department, or the Police Department, as well as the added benefit for consumers of marijuana not needing to travel to other towns to purchase cannabis products. While citizens voted in favor of this measure, the city still needed time to draft ordinances and decide on regulations that fit the needs of their community.
In the six months since voting, the Grand Junction staff has worked closely with both the last group of council members and the newly elected members to discuss what rules and regulations will work best for their city. Public comment was heard and considered and the discussions with staff and councilors has continued over many meetings. While there is still no final ordinance, they have finalized decisions in a few areas.
The taxing rate was one of the first topics that they came to a consensus on. The Municipal Tax Code will be amended to set a 6% special cannabis sales and use tax rate for the City of Grand Junction.
Zoning was also discussed early on, and it was agreed upon that retail marijuana dispensaries should be restricted to areas in which general retail operations are allowed. These include the C-1 (Light Commercial), C-2 (General Commercial), B-1 (Neighborhood Business), B-2 (Downtown Business), M-U (Mixed Use), MXG-3 (Mixed Use General), and MXOC (Mixed Use Opportunity Corridor) districts.
There were also two neighborhood districts that requested special additional restrictions in their areas. The Downtown Development Authority requested that between 1st and 8th Street, no cannabis stores shall be allowed on the ground floor, and the Horizon Drive Business Improvement District requested to limit the number of stores in their area to only two. The City has obliged these requests, and they will be honored as additional restrictions in the final ordinance.
While the Planning Commission originally suggested to only require a 500-foot setback from schools, the council members directed staff to create guidelines for a more restrictive approach. After seeing a few visual examples of how buffering from setbacks may change the outcome of the number of stores, councilors decided on a 1000-foot setback from schools, in addition to a 500-foot setback from parks and rehabilitation facilities.
Before voting even began, the number 6 was floated around as a potential cap on the number of licenses that would be available to prospective business owners. Some of the councilors seemed to want to stick with that number, to cap the number or stores at a smaller number as well as proposing setbacks and zoning to further limit the placement of stores. Other council members thought that six was a low number for their larger city, and that something more along the lines of ten or fifteen stores seemed like a more apt number. Then there were other members who discussed not imposing a numerical cap at all, but instead letting the free market and real estate market decide the outcome of how many stores would be operating, while still requiring that setback and zoning restrictions be met. After discussions over multiple meetings, the council members came to an agreement that a numerical cap of ten was something that they could all come together on.
The discussion of how to choose the recipients who will receive the ten licenses was guided by staff who had some visual guides to show how each of the options proposed would work. They talked about a lottery, a weighted lottery, a strictly merit-based approach, and a hybrid of a lottery with a merit-based system. After much debate of which option will work out the best for the ideas they have, the council members agreed upon a weighted lottery that will also base some of its weighted criteria on a merit-based approach.
While discussions are still ongoing, and there is no definitive date set for when the City of Grand Junction will begin accepting applications, the discussions involving the ordinance and regulations are moving along, with many of the main topics already decided upon. There is much excitement in the air right now in Grand Junction. From the potential future dispensary owners hunting for properties, excited for the new market to open, on the edge of their seats waiting for applications to become available, to consumers who are looking forward to purchasing concentrates, edibles, flower, and more from a dispensary within their own town! It appears that the wait will continue into 2022 for a grand opening, but even that won’t quell the excitement and anticipation for the first dispensary in the Western Slope’s most populous city.
