Downtown business owner fuming over cannabis decision
A Main Street business owner is advising Penticton council to tread cautiously with retail cannabis stores when bigger issues in the downtown core already exist.
K. Banks Travel owner and manager Allayne Clark has spent the last six months contemplating moving her business of 25 years after weekly, and sometimes daily, disruptions from vagrants and drug addicts in and around her store.
“They’re either smoking marijuana or intimidating our clients from coming in the door,” Clark said.
Clark attended a Jan. 8 public hearing and urged council to reconsider allowing pot shops along Main Street, but was disappointed when the bylaw amendment passed 4-2, with the mayor having recused himself due to being a Main Street business owner and Coun. Jake Kimberley and Coun. Katie Robinson in opposition.
“I completely missed the first couple (public hearings). I don’t know if it was great timing on (council’s) part because a couple of them were held right over the holidays,” said Clark.
“In my opinion, it seems like they’re trying to rush it through as much as possible.”
For Clark, the reality of a pot shop near her own business feels very real with Bluenose Coins, only one door down from her, having applied to become a cannabis store.
“My hope is that they really tread cautiously on all of this, and that they look at other locations,” said Clark, adding that she isn’t against legal cannabis stores.
“Why not consider Ellis Street or Martin Street?”
Three councillors and the mayor personally visited Clark several days after last week’s hearing, but Clark said Vassilaki was unable to speak to the bylaw due to his conflict of interest.
“In the area here, we don’t know what the impact will be, so put it on one of the other outlying streets and we could still have it downtown, and then we can monitor it,” Clark said. “Why put it on Main Street where we already have this problem?”
Clark suggested that monitoring the stores for three to five years would give the city an understanding of not only foot traffic, but of how parking and road traffic is affected.
Clark says that she and her staff are concerned for their safety when they have to walk to their vehicles at night, and many customers have been followed or harassed on their way in or out of the store.
Staff has also had to ask vagrants to leave the property when they enter the store and cause a disturbance, or when they’re found to be sleeping in front of the door.
Clark has called bylaw but hesitates with police, because she understands how swamped they already are.
And when she and her staff have to confront the individual themselves, it’s nothing short of a frightening experience.
“I just feel that we’ve spent so much money in the downtown core trying to attract tourists, we have one of the best-rated farmer’s markets in all of Canada,” said Clark. “So why would we want to jeopardize the character of these areas that are already struggling with some issues?”
Another issue the business and its customers are now facing is parking, Clark added, with the back parking lot a hotspot for drug use.
“That’s just sent it over the edge, pretty much. And this has just been really problematic for our senior clients, and they’re such a big part of our valued clients,” explained Clark.
Robinson expressed similar concerns to Clark, adding that council wasn’t seeking to ban pot shops all together but instead keep them off of Main Street until the city had a better understanding of the amount of traffic they would bring.
“I already see a lot of congestion (on Main Street), and it’s difficult for people to get in and out. So when you get into a high volume traffic, which certainly a cannabis retail store is going to be . . . I just see that adding to the problem,” said Robinson.
In addressing Clark’s concerns about vagrants, Robinson explained that the city is working on a different approach.
“I’m not 100 per cent convinced it’s going to get any worse with that kind of store,” she said. “I think that’s more of a housing and social problem than it is a cannabis concern.”
Robinson said that the city is working on a multi-pronged solution to the safety concerns, with one step being the new special task force that she and other councillors are a part of.
Council is also working to increase bylaw and RCMP presence and work on housing strategies to address the concerns Robinson knows the public is concerned about.
“We’re also going to be doing, I hope, some public education,” Robinson explained, adding that increasing safety awareness is key.
Council will still exercise some control on cannabis stores because it will get the final say on each application.