Council gives cannabis business green light
Redwood City is open for cannabis business, but marijuana operators aren’t particularly high about the terms.
As far as they’re concerned, the city is banishing them to the industrial side of town and imposing overly restrictive rules.
At its Monday night meeting, the City Council voted 5-2 — with Jeffrey Gee and Vice Mayor Diane Howard dissenting — to approve an ordinance that establishes a zone where recreational marijuana wholesale businesses and indoor commercial-use nurseries can operate. That zone encompasses Seaport Boulevard east of Highway 101 and some areas west of the freeway on Veterans Boulevard. That’s where medical marijuana businesses before them primarily were relegated to.
City planners say those areas have a 3.89 percent vacancy rate, a fact they considered to be enticing to businesses.
Under the ordinance, the nurseries can only grow marijuana seeds, clones and immature plants and sell them just to wholesalers or commercial businesses, not individuals. They must provide 24-hour security and cannot operate within 1,000 feet of schools, youth centers, public parks and libraries. The state only requires them to be a minimum of 600 feet from schools.
In addition to medical
marijuana deliveries that began in 2012, the ordinance allows recreational marijuana deliveries to businesses that obtain a business license in the city.
“It feels like the city is doing the bare minimum to satisfy Proposition 64,” Sean Kali-Rai, president and founder of the Silicon Valley Cannabis Alliance, said about the state measure voters approved in 2016 legalizing recreational marijuana use and sale. “But it’s still being so restrictive and forcing small business owners to have to negotiate space with landlords who either reject the business on moral grounds or price-gouge.”
In addition, Kali-Rai said, “it’s unfair that this pushes businesses away from residential areas. Cannabis business owners are usually small businesses without the capital to compete for some of these industrial areas.”
“We’re starting slow,” City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz said Tuesday. “Last night’s conversation was a productive one for the council, which has directed us to address each issue as we go along.”
Kali-Rai also is a paid consultant for Harvest Bloom, one of the medical marijuana companies established in San Carlos with an administrative office in Redwood City. He said the company is worried it’ll have to comply with the new zoning rules if it expands into the the recreational marijuana business.
Harvest Bloom owner/operator Alex Gillis explained the concern.
“Most of my products are pre-packaged goods. There would be no cultivating or packaging at my site,” Gillis told the council, saying his administrative office isn’t situated within the marijuana zone. “With 20 employees, a lifelong residency in the city and a well-established business, we would like to remain in place.”
He asked if a business like his could be grandfathered in.
Also at issue for local cannabis proprietors was the rule in the ordinance requiring 24-hour security for businesses.
“I don’t think a 1,000-square-foot business needs $5,000 to $10,000 a month in security,” McGillis said. “We’re not talking about large dispensaries here.”