Cannabis zoning map proposal; legal sales districts shaded in purple.
Should the city allow for the legal sale of cannabis on Long Wharf? Or is recreational pot not a good part of the plan for that to-be-developed waterfront district?
Local legislators grappled with those questions — among many others — as they worked through a first draft of the city’s proposed zoning regulations for where marijuana sales may and may not take place in town.
City staffers Carlos Eyzaguirre, Cathy Graves, Dijonée Talley, and Laura Brown at Tuesday's meeting.
The venue for that discussion was Tuesday night’s latest regular meeting of the Board of Alders Legislation Committee. The in-person meeting took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
Most of Tuesday’s meeting consisted of committee alders and city staff parsing through a proposed zoning ordinance amendment concerning “the responsible and equitable regulation of adult-use cannabis,” as the title of the amendment itself reads.
No members of the public turned out for the public hearing, leaving all of Tuesday night’s discussion of the matter to take place among committee alders and City Plan Director Laura Brown, city Policy Analyst Dijonée Talley, city Deputy Economic Development Director Cathy Graves, city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Carlos Eyzaguirre, and city Assistant Corporation Counsel Michael Pinto.
The committee alders left the proposed zoning updates “on the table” without taking any votes, meaning that they will take the matter up for another public hearing and round of review at a future committee meeting. Click here, here and here to read more about the city’s cannabis zoning proposal.
City of New Haven image
Proposed local zoning rules for cannabis businesseses.
Talley explained that last year’s state legislation that legalized recreational adult-use cannabis passes much of the decision-making power for where those stores and related businesses should be located to the local level.
There are also a limited number of state-granted licenses available for entrepreneurs interested in applying to become, for example, a cannabis retailer, or micro-cultivator, or delivery service.
Brown pointed out that the city’s proposed zoning amendment would allow for these cannabis establishments to locate in business and industrial zones only, and would not allow them to set up in residential districts, light marine zones, park districts, cemetery zones, or airport zoning districts.
They would also have to maintain a 500-foot distance from the boundary of a school building, as well as a 1,500-foot distance from another cannabis business.
And they would be banned from the city’s three “planning districts” on River Street, Long Wharf, and the Hill-to-Downtown area.
Thomas Breen photo
Majority Leader Richard Furlow: Why not Long Wharf?
“Why is Long Wharf excluded?” Board of Alders Majority Leader and Amity/Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow asked. “What is the thought process” for that prohibition? “That appears to be a perfect place, off the highway, by Sports Haven. I don’t understand the rationale.”
Brown, who started in her role as City Plan Department director at the end of February, said that that the decision to prohibit pot sales from municipal planning districts (MPDs) was one put forward before her tenure.
“I understand there’s been quite a bit of discussion and deliberations around what should be included in these MPDs,” she said. “What the vision is, what the goals are. In order to respect that work and the goals that have been set forth by these special districts, it was determined that it would be best at this time to restrict use, and that it would not be consistent with the goals” set forth in those plans.
Assistant Corporation Counsel Mike Pinto.
Pinto elaborated on that decision. When the MPDs were designed and thought through, such as the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan in 2019, “obviously cannabis was not an option for a use at the time.”
He said that city staffers decided to “exclude [legal cannabis sales] for now” from the MPDs, and then to revisit that decision “at a future time” to see if and how that use could fit into the city’s development goals for those districts.
Furlow said that city staffers should expect some “pushback” on that decision to bar cannabis from Long Wharf in this initial zoning proposal. “There are a lot of alders wondering what’s going on with that.”
And in response to Pinto’s pitch to revisit legal cannabis sales in these MPDs at a future date, Furlow replied, “but this is why we’re here. I don’t like creating ordinances in which we have to reconsider something later. Let’s see if we can get it right the first time.”
Special Permits. Liquor Stores. Taxes
Westville Alder Adam Marchand.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand asked the city staffers to explain why cannabis retailers, micro-cultivators, hybrid retailers, food and beverage businesses, product packagers, product manufacturers, and cultivators would require a special permit to operate in business and industrial districts under the proposed zoning regulations, while cannabis delivery services and transporters would be allowed to operate in those parts of the city as of right.
Brown explained that the special permit requirement would mean that those business types would have to go before the City Plan Commission for a public hearing and review, and the commission would be allowed to consider “sensitive receptors” like a location’s proximity to parks, playgrounds, community gardens, and the size and intensity of the proposed establishment, before taking a vote.
City Policy Analyst Dijonée Talley.
Transport and delivery services meanwhile, “are the only licenses out of the nine that you wouldn’t have product housed on site for extended periods of time,” Talley said. Delivery services carry cannabis product from the retail store to the customer, while transport services carry it between facilities that produce and sell product.
“They’re literally picking up product and delivering it to where it needs to go.” Thus the as-of-right zoning permission.
City Plan Director Laura Brown.
Is the 500-foot buffer around schools roughly the same as the zoning limitations on liquor stores? Furlow asked.
That 500-foot buffer between schools and cannabis business is actually set in state statute, Brown said.
However, the city-proposed 1,500-foot buffer between cannabis businesses is in line with the city’s existing zoning rules for liquor stores.
Talley added that New Haven is capped at five cannabis dispensary licenses from the state, so the city will not see a glut of new cannabis shops opening up across zoning-permitted parts of town anytime soon.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison.
How much tax revenue might the city receive from cannabis businesses? Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison asked.
Graves said that Springfield, Mass., currently gets about $3 million in tax revenue from cannabis sales in that city.
Graves and Pinto said that the state law legalizing cannabis sales also imposes a 3 percent tax on top on those sales, with the resulting revenue ultimately heading back to the municipalities where those sales take place.
Pinto said that the revenue generated by that 3 percent cannabis sales tax has some limitations on how it may be spent. For example, it may be used to fund improvements to streetscapes and other neighborhood developments in and around communities where the cannabis retailer is located. It may fund services for individuals recently released from incarceration. It may fund “efforts to promote civic engagement.”
“As legislators, we’re constantly looking at our taxes, at our tax rolls,” Morrison said. “If this is something that could help with keeping the taxes at bay, or taking a big chunk away from the residents, that’s very helpful.”