Pot shop near school seeks city’s OK

Staff recommend sending rezoning to public hearing

Victoria city staff are recommending a second marijuana storefront operation be sent to a rezoning public hearing — even though it’s technically too close to a school.

Farmacy Dispensary, 3055 Scott St. at the corner of Hillside Avenue, has applied for a rezoning to continue its operation in an existing commercial area.

City staff say the application generally complies with in the intent of city cannabis retailer rezoning policies — except for the provision that does not allow a cannabis storefront within 200 metres of a school.

Farmacy is 119 metres from the property line at Lansdowne Middle School’s sports field, though both city staff and the applicant point out that the dispensary is 398 metres away from the main school building.

Staff say the “intent of the policy” is met “through the extended distance from the subject property to the school’s main building as well as the subject property’s buffered location across an arterial road and setback within an existing commercial development.”

Deane Strongitharm, of City Spaces Consulting, notes in a letter to council that the dispensary has been operating for 11⁄2 years to “rigorous standards” and has not had any issues with the neighbourhood.

“The Farmacy Dispensary is ideally located in terms of use, access, and impacts, notwithstanding the policy inconsistency with the distance from the school. This inconsistency is an anomaly of the strict interpretation of the policy and is not, in our view, a meaningful discrepancy,” Strongitharm writes on behalf of the application.

Last week Victoria councillors voted to forward an application for Trees, at 546 Yates St., to public hearing, while deferring consideration of a second application from Pure Releaf, for its proposed dispensary at 510-512 Yates St. — less than half a block from the Trees outlet.

Approval of both the Yates Street outlets would be in violation of the city’s cannabis dispensary rezoning policy, which mandates that storefront cannabis retailers must be at least 200 metres from each other.

There are 35 dispensaries operating in Victoria. Of those, 16 have applied for rezoning and 29 have applied for a business licence.

Under the process now in place, a business licence will not be issued until a rezoning has been approved.

Meanwhile, marijuana retailers are expected to come into compliance with business licensing requirements, which prohibit cannabis consumption on the premises, restrict opening hours to between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. and do not allow anyone younger than 19 to be in the stores.

The city gave dispensaries a 60-day grace period to come into compliance with bylaws before beginning enforcement at the end of November.