Burger joint plans have gone completely to pot

Application made to locate a legal marijuana store in the convenience store that city council rejected as location for Big Boys Burgers

A convenience store that city council did not want converted into a burger restaurant could now become a legal cannabis store.

In late January, city council turned down an application for rezoning to a restaurateur who wanted to convert the store at 51 Lansdowne St. W., next to McKnight’s Gifts, into a Big Boy’s Burgers.

Big Boy’s has other restaurants in its chain in the GTA and in Cobourg and wanted to add a location here.

But city staff said there wasn’t enough parking for a restaurant and city council agreed — especially since the city plans to widen that section of Lansdowne Street in the future and it would eat up the property’s entire parking lot (which is along the street).

Now there’s an application with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario to convert the building into a legal cannabis store called Northern Lights Cannabis.

Mike Kantaros, the owner of Big Boy’s Burgers, could not be reached for comment

on Tuesday.

His planner, Kevin Duguay, wrote in an email to The Examiner that he’s not involved with this application, but that as far as he knows his client still owns the property.

The application is now in a period of public notice, meaning citizens have until midnight on May 21 to give feedback about the proposal to put a cannabis store at this location.

The AGCO’s portal can be used to submit comments at www.agco.ca/ and click on cannabis.

There are four other applications for legal cannabis stores in Peterborough.

The public notice periods for these applications have all elapsed, but the stores have yet to receive authorization to open their doors.

Those applications are for:

> Happy Dayz at 291 George St. N.

> The Peace Pipe at 408 George St. N.

> The Joint Venture Shoppe, for the former Moksha Hot Yoga location at 550 Lansdowne St. W. Unit 15 in the Heritage Plaza.

> Kasa Kana at 1840 Lansdowne St. W. Unit 8 in the Maple Ridge Plaza.

There’s already one legal cannabis store open in Peterborough: Growers Retail is open for curbside pickup at 225 George St. N., in the former Classic Rattan shop across from the No Frills store.

Growers Retail has now applied to open a second store at 566 Frank Hill Rd. at Fowlers Corners in the City of Kawartha Lakes at the site where it had originally intended to locate last year.