MORE POT SHOPS APPROVED
Board faces massive surge following legalization of recreational marijuana
The rush for legal weed continued Friday, as seen by the ongoing line-up at local stores such as Nova Cannabis. It’s also prompted changes in how the city is going to handle licence appeals and changes in hours at stores, due to noise complaints.
City regulators are fast-tracking a bottle-necked appeals process that’s leaving dozens of cannabis store applicants in pricey limbo.
The subdivision and development appeals board (SDAB) is hoping to fill five vacancies on the panel that hears appeals of city decisions on cannabis store proposals.
It’ll also double up on the number of hearings occurring at the same time while streamlining the process, said Jeremy Fraser, manager of the city’s quasi-judicial boards.
“We’re looking at these new tools to see if we can speed up the appeals … we’re doing our best so people have a point of certainty,” he said.
The SDAB is facing an almost unprecedented surge of appeals due to the legalization of recreational marijuana that took effect Wednesday, with only two of the shops opening in Calgary at that time.
Since late July, it’s received 102 cases, compared to dealing with 119 for all of last year.
That workload has since been compounded by 24 non-cannabisrelated appeals, said Fraser.
It’s been a major source of gridlock in the opening of cannabis stores in the city.
Many would-be retailers have been paying often double market value for leases they’ve been unable to use.
“We didn’t expect the volume and velocity of appeals,” Fraser said.
On top of the extra panel members, the board is hiring four additional administrative staffers and could recruit more in the coming months, he said.
It’s also reducing the quorum needed for a hearing from a minimum of five panellists to three.
“It’s addressing some structural issues, creating greater flexibility in the board,” said Fraser.
Appeals have been scheduled into March and it’s hoped the changes will prevent further delays, he added.
The moves were welcome for a fledgling industry faced with additional birthing pains of the SDAB process, said Ryan Kaye, vicepresident of Four20 Premium Market, which is facing appeals from rivals.
“That would be great … instead of having an open business, we have lease payments,” said Kaye, whose company has opened one store.
But he said frustrations remain in the form of what he calls competitors’ frivolous appeals.
“When we went to a (SDAB) meeting to see if it was dismissed, we were told to come back in January,” he said.
“For a $100 fee, (our competitor) was able to block our location for four months.”
Three-quarters of the appeals are challenging the city’s refusals of store applications, the rest are contesting approvals.
Several of the 102 appeal applications the appeals board has received have been dropped and decisions have been made on about a half-dozen of them.
As of last Monday, the city has received 293 cannabis store applications and had approved 119 of them.