Quan’s pot shop plan gets chilly reception in Sunset
Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and her physician husband, Dr. Floyd Huen, are turning their talents from politics to pot — and not with the greatest of results.
The couple are partners in a medical marijuana dispensary looking to be licensed in San Francisco’s heavily Asian American Outer Sunset.
“It’s important that Asian Pacific Americans and other minorities take positions of leadership within the cannabis business community to bring greater diversity to the industry,” Huen said in a statement.
If the city approves its license, the dispensary at 2505 Noriega St. would be the latest branch
of the Apothecarium, a high-end medical marijuana outfit founded six years ago in the Castro. The club’s owners also operate in Las Vegas and have approvals for new branches in the Marina neighborhood and in downtown Berkeley.
From the looks of things, however, approval of the Outer Sunset club — where Quan and Huen would be co-owners — is no sure thing. In fact, if Thursday’s community meeting at the Taraval Police Station to pitch the proposal is any indication, the outcome could be as bad as Quan’s losing 2014 bid for re-election.
Huen was shouted down by an overflow crowd worried that the dispensary will bring crime into the neighborhood. It got so raucous that the session had to be shut down.
“This is a beachhead for bringing recreational marijuana to the Sunset, and we don’t want it sold in our neighborhood,” said Valerie Schmalz, one of those who showed up at the meeting.
“Unfortunately, the meeting was hijacked by a small group of conservative activists who prevented me from speaking,” Huen said in his statement to us. But he added, “I believe in free speech and access to health care, and will continue fighting for both.”
For her part, Quan has been advocating for medical marijuana for years. As a member of the Oakland City Council, she wrote that city’s dispensary legislation back in 2004.
But she said the driving force behind the dispensary application in the Outer Sunset is “mainly my husband. You need to talk to him.”
Huen has a practice as a gerontologist but told us he has been moonlighting as a medical adviser to the Apothecarium for several months.
And in his own practice, he said, he has been prescribing medical marijuana for chronic pain, cancer and diabetes since 1996. Now, as part owner of the planned dispensary in the Sunset, he said he is “especially interested in providing bilingual and culturally sensitive services that collaborate with traditional Asian medical practitioners.”
As for why they aren’t setting up shop in their hometown of Oakland, where both Quan and Huen have been politically active for years?
“We didn’t want there to be the appearance of a conflict of interest.” said Eliot Dobris, a spokesman for the Apothecarium.
Pothole politics: It doesn’t operate a single transit line, but Oakland has created its own Department of Transportation, complete with a staff of 270 and a new, $203,179-a-year director.
Most of the staffers are already working for the city and will be shifted to the new department from other agencies, such as Public Works. But the startup still comes with costs — getting it up and running has taken $1.5 million.
Mayor Libby Schaaf says it’s money well spent.
“Oakland’s streets need transformation, and they also need a champion to fight for them,” Schaaf said in announcing the hiring of Ryan Russo to head the new department, which will be known as OakDOT.
Russo is now with the New York City Department of Transportation, where he has held senior positions under both Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg .It was Bloomberg’s foundation, Bloomberg Associates, that led a nationwide search to fill the Oakland job.
Russo said he was excited about Schaaf ’s vision for the city.
OakDOT is being bolstered by $350 million in Measure KK street funding approved by voters in November. Schaaf says it will not only resurface the city’s pothole-pocked streets, but also redesign them to provide “new opportunities for walking, biking (and) increasing access to transit stops and stations.”
The idea is to create more parking-protected bike lanes like one put in along Telegraph Avenue, or spaces like Latham Square, a downtown plaza that used to be a street.
If Russo’s work in New York is any indication, Oakland residents are likely to see more traffic lanes shrink to make way for bikes, more bus stops, and various steps to make for slower — and thus safer — traffic.
Or, if you’re behind the wheel of a car, more backups.
Shock wave: Caltrain officials are scrambling to pull together a Plan B to make up for the $647 million in electrification money they may lose thanks to the change at the top in Washington.
So far, however, about the best they can come up with is to enlist tech bosses like those in the Silicon Valley Leadership Group to lobby the administration and Congress — and perhaps to turn to a red state for help.
Caltrain officials don’t want to say anything publicly, but their best ally appears to be Utah, where the factory that would build the rail line’s new electric cars is located — and which would gain 1,500 jobs in the deal.
They also hope the Silicon Valley tech titans who are heading to Washington this month to talk tax reform with the Trump administration will help sell the need for the money.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao hit the brakes on the big Caltrain project after all 14 Republicans in the California congressional delegation asked that the government first audit the state’s high-speed rail effort. Republicans are hoping to kill the bullettrain project, which would need an electrified line up the Peninsula to make it all the way to San Francisco.
Some Republicans say it wouldn’t be a tragedy if the Caltrain funding went away for good.
“Why should the federal government pay for that? There’s more billionaires in Silicon Valley than anywhere else,” GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare told reporters last week.
“You’re not going to get me to feel too bad for one of the richest places on the planet not having a train,” Nunes said.