The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
City imposes smoke shop moratorium, explores future legal options
WEST HAVEN — Officials have concerns about smoke shops in the city, leaving owners of the businesses seeking solutions as they await potential regulations and restrictions.
On Tuesday, the Planning and Zoning Commission passed a sixmonth moratorium on approving new 24-hour convenience stores, smoke shops and smoke shop signs. Although applications in the pipeline will not be impacted, the six-month moratorium on considering new applications became effective immediately. Commission counsel Karen Baldwin Kravetz said it’s “an implicit power” of the commission that it need not consider applications if it determines not to. The moratorium also impacts the city’s planning department, which will no longer issue permits to such establishments throughout the sixmonth period.
Assistant City Planner Cathy Conniff said that historically smoke shop applications, should they be permissible within the zoning regulations, have been treated as as-ofright retail uses. She said the office does not need to streamline applications in that way and can require a special permit.
Conniff said the city could review several concerns about smoke shops, such as the tinting and coverage of windows, the hours of operation and whether retail signs can be illuminated.
West Haven Mayor Dorinda Borer said her intention is to “clean up” city retail corridors. She said this moratorium will allow the city to explore legal avenues for implementing new regulations. She hopes that existing 24-hour convenience stores and smoke shops won’t be “grandfathered in” if the city adds restrictions around measures like light pollution or operating hours.
“It all leads back to attracting people to our city and to reflect a more probusiness atmosphere,” she said.
Borer said she is not opposed to stores being open late if they provide services people need, like
prescriptions. But smoke shops are “becoming a hangout” late at night when the city does not want to promote that, she said.
“We want to curb the activity in the middle of the night,” she said.
Conniff said multiple city departments, including the mayor, planning office, corporation counsel and the police department, have a stake in investigating the smoke shop business model and the apparent prevalence
of such stores throughout the city.
“There are certain regulations that we’re going to be looking at to even establish a 24-hour store. We don’t need 24-hour stores down on the beach,” she said. “There’s been a lot of problems with the 24-hour stores.”
Liberty Food Store opened roughly one month ago at the Campbell Avenue and West Spring Street intersection that was, until recently, the West Haven location of Charm’s Security Hardware. Proprietor Yasir said the business is not a smoke shop, and its emphasis
will be on food. Nevertheless, a bright white sign bearing the word “Vape” appears in the window, as well as a sign advertising 25 percent off several e-cigarette brands.
“We just opened a month ago, and we are exploring our options and what we are doing,” he said when asked about the potential for the city to pass new regulations.
Earlier in the planning commission meeting where the moratorium was approved, the commission narrowly approved changing the Regional Business District
regulations to allow cannabis retailers by special permit. The applicants for that zoning change explained to the commission how heavily regulated their industry is; the attorney representing the application said transactions often last no longer than three minutes.
Commissioners discussed that the dispensary business, which is more heavily taxed and regulated, is undercut by smoke shops, which sell products but collect less in taxes and are often watched less closely in confirming customer identification.