Path cleared for Royal Oak Gym building owner to sell property to retail pot business

The owner of the Royal Oak Gym building got approval to rezone the property to clear the way for selling the site with 44 parking spots to an unnamed marijuana retail business.

The city Planning Commission last month recommended the request to rezone the 13,000 square-foot building at 1600 Stephenson Highway from neighborhood business to general business. The city’s marijuana ordinance allows marijuana businesses to locate only in general business or industrial zones.

In a 5-2 vote, the City Commission approved rezoning the site Monday night. But a marijuana business that seeks to start operations there after a sale still faces the hurdles of getting a special land use permit and site plan approval.

Additionally, the city has yet to start the application process for cannabis businesses to locate in Royal Oak.

MCF Properties LLC owns the parcel of land, which is across the street from the large Kroger Marketplace and fuel center at 12 Mile and Ste

phenson. Less than a half mile north on Stephenson, in Madison Heights, a $20 million medical marijuana facility with retail, processing and growing is being developed.

A majority of about 10 Royal Oak residents who called in during public comment for Monday’s meeting supported the rezoning. Nearly 70 percent of city voters in the November 2018 election approved a statewide ballot that allows recreational marijuana use and a tax on pot businesses.

Commissioners Sharlan Douglas and Brandon Kolo were among those who objected to granting the rezoning, which some referred to critically as “spot

zoning.” Douglas questioned how many other businesses would seek rezoning if the Royal Oak Gym site effort to rezone succeeded.

Spot zoning is allowing a small parcel of land to be used for a classification that is different from surrounding properties in a way that benefits a single property owner while potentially harming other owners.

Richard Rattner, an attorney for the owner, said a marijuana business would fit with the surrounding businesses, which are mostly large general business operators.

“There are no (residential) neighborhoods here,” he said.

City Commissioner Patricia Paruch believed the zoning change to general business was warranted.

“I think it’s a very reasonable request,” she said, dis

agreeing that such a move constituted spot zoning. “That area has changed dramatically…I think the neighborhood business strategy there is out of date.”

Mayor Michael Fournier and Douglas also sit on the Planning Commission and both earlier voted against the zoning change.

But Fournier on Monday said he was swayed by Paruch’s arguments to allow the change for the Royal Oak Gym property, even though there was some risk of “opening a Pandora’s Box” of other businesses seeking spot zoning.

He and others noted the question of whether the gym property might become a marijuana facility should have no bearing on whether to allow rezoning of the gym site..

That property “is an outlier and has a different zoning than the surrounding property,” Fournier said.

Most of the controversy around marijuana businesses in the city has been about Royal Oak’s ordinance that allows two retailers to open in the general business district on Woodward Avenue.

One of the key leaders of that opposition, resident and former City Attorney Charles Semchena, sent an emailed statement to the city Planning Commission supporting rezoning for the Royal Oak Gym site.

“Severe lack of parking , bad access, and proximity to neighborhoods makes most of the Woodward corridor unsuitable for recreational marijuana stores,” Semchena said in the statement. “There are many other sites in Royal Oak that are not so harmful and one of them is (the Royal Oak Gym) at 1600 N. Stephenson.”