HIGH SECURITY
At Danbury’s first proposed hybrid pot shop, protection includes motion sensors, guards and biotracking
DANBURY — The high-resolution surveillance cameras will track you in real time from the moment you arrive in the parking lot on Mill Plain Road, near Interstate 84’s Exit 2.
In the vestibule, a new set of cameras and electronic surveillance will record your interaction with a security representative who will ask you for identification and your medical marijuana card if you’re patient, or for your driver’s license if you’re a retail customer to prove you’re an adult.
If that checks out, you’re ready to be escorted to a secure counter area with locked metal cabinets, where you’ll be greeted by new security systems, including full-circle video technology, overlapping motion detection sensors, glass-break alarms, hidden panic buttons and a “digitally recorded pan-tiltzoom surveillance camera with real-time and search capability.”
And you are nowhere near either of the facility’s marijuana vaults, which have special security systems of their own protecting them, including “audible percussion alarm sensors.”
As you place your order, your vital information will be entered into a live “BioTrackTHC” system that will only permit the employee to sell you the allowed limit, based on your buying history.
Assuming all goes well, you will be surveilled back into the parking lot.
This is the experience you can expect at what would be Danbury’s first hybrid cannabis dispensary and retail marijuana store called The Botanist on the west side, according to a security and safety plan.
“The Botanist incorporates a compre
hensive, multi-layered approach to all security operations, technologies, and safety procedures to safeguard all patients, caregivers, consumers and staff involving every aspect of the operation, dispensing, sale, and control of marijuana and related products,” reads the security and safety plan, which the city’s Planning Commission will review at a public hearing on Wednesday.
Wednesday’s public hearing is the latest step for the city’s only medical marijuana facility to become Danbury’s first hybrid cannabis business that also sells retail pot to adults. The hybrid model is one of four types of cannabis businesses that Danbury permits, on a limited basis, under new regulations that were passed this summer.
At the same public hearing, the city’s Planning Commission will continue to hear an application for the city’s first retail pot store on a busy section of Federal Road on the east end.
The Botanist’s safety and security plan, which along with a traffic analysis is a required part of the permit review process, demonstrates the lengths the state has gone to make the legal sale of retail marijuana to adults as problem free as possible.
The plan also incorporates best practices from other states where The Botanist’s parent company, Acreage Holdings, operates.
“Acreage Holdings is committed to identifying the problems before they start, creating solutions to alleviate them, and committing to being a responsible cannabis manufacturing facility that enhances the economic wellbeing of the community,” reads The Botanist’s property management plan.
Security and safety will be a key area of review for planners because of the neighborhoods to the north of the property. In fact, The Botanist was almost locked out of its chance to open its doors to retail pot sales because of its proximity to the nearest residential zone.Against the wishes of most of Danbury’s planning establishment, the city’s Zoning Commission voted in September to bend the rules for The Botanist and change the way distance is measured between cannabis businesses and homes, clearing the way for the public hearing on Dec. 7.
Among the scores of other security features in The Botanist’s plan include a “revolving risk, threat, and vulnerability analysis” carried out by a consultant, a “double airlock security system which prevents the opening of the interior door until the exterior door is closed and locked,” and a procedure for deliveries of marijuana products that includes “constant video surveillance” and “transportation manifests (that) are reconciled and recorded for accuracy prior to transport and again upon delivery.”