By, Brian Lockhart on CTPost.com
BRIDGEPORT — Connecticut’s largest municipality has reversed course and is now putting up the “welcome” sign for legalized cannabis businesses.
Members of the zoning commission this week approved amended regulations allowing recreational marijuana retail sales in a majority of the city’s commercial strips, undoing last fall’s vote that defined this new industry the same as strip clubs and pornography shops and hid the future storefronts away.
“The real thrust of this from a land-use point of view was to expand the potential footprint — to move from being isolated in the industrial areas to the more customer-friendly commercial corridors and the downtown,” William Coleman, deputy economic development director, said Thursday following the commission’s Wednesday night action.
“I firmly believe this is one of the major decisions made in the City of Bridgeport in the past decade, no question about it,” said Zoning Commission member Robert Filotei, who cast one of the few “no” votes at Wednesday’s meeting.
Meanwhile a proponent, Adam Wood, president of the Connecticut Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, applauded the zoning commission’s decision.
Wood, former chief of staff to ex-Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, said the city should benefit from Connecticut’s efforts to ensure some licensed retailers are entrepreneurs with lower incomes, from areas with high unemployment or high drug-related conviction rates.
“Bridgeport is a community that was disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs,” Wood said. “Hopefully, this will help the city to attract new businesses and more actively benefit from the state’s social equity program.”
Officials in Democrat-dominated Bridgeport, starting under Finch, initially rebuffed medical marijuana operations after they were legalized in Connecticut in 2012. But by June 2021, when Connecticut lawmakers had legalized recreational pot for adults 21 and over, City Hall, now run by Mayor Joe Ganim, was readying to embrace that change — along with the promised sales tax revenues and other anticipated economic benefits.
A 3 percent municipal tax levied on gross sales is estimated to add, at minimum, over $1 million annually to typically cash-strapped and high-taxed Bridgeport’s budget.
Already working on Zone Bridgeport, a comprehensive update of the entire local land use codes and maps, the city’s planning and economic development department incorporated treating cannabis dispensaries the same as liquor stores, meaning as a “controlled use.”
But late last year a few cautious members of the zoning commission before adopting Zone Bridgeport successfully convinced their colleagues to scrap that approach and instead treat pot retailers the same as adult entertainment.
Under the amendment adopted this week, cannabis merchants must obtain a “certificate of location” from the zoning commission similar to businesses that sell or serve alcohol or provide vehicle sales and services. Such a certificate will be renewed every five years to ensure the vendors are responsible and good neighbors.
Unlike the city’s rules for liquor establishments which keep those storefronts 750 feet away from so-called sensitive uses like schools, cannabis retailers can be 500 feet away. Coleman Thursday said the economic development office had looked at increasing that distance at the request of members of the City Council, but stuck with the 500-foot requirement.
“When you start to draw the circles (around possible pot dispensary sites) it started to really pinch the places where you could locate the industry,” Coleman said.
But, he emphasized, marijuana retailers must per the state operate under “a much higher threshold of security by which one has to pass in order to become a customer.
“They are vastly different industries with how they regulate and how the consumer must interact with the industry,” Coleman said.
With the state beginning to issue the first licenses, Coleman anticipated Bridgeport will start to receive inquiries from interested retailers “almost immediately.”
“But it would be a few months before we’d see anything formal before the (zoning) commission,” he said.
State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, as co-chairman of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee helped spearhead passage of legalized pot legislation. He last year had criticized the zoning commission’s prior approach as “asinine.”
“I’m glad to see they fixed the mistake that was made,” Stafstrom said. “Certainly this is a new and burgeoning industry that is going to create significant jobs and economic opportunity, particularly in a distressed municipality like Bridgeport. The city should be opening its arms to this type of economic investment.”
Johanna Dorgan is a Democratic zoning commission member who backed the revised regulations Wednesday.
“It’s legal,” Dorgan said. “Those that haven’t faced the facts, it’s time. … I don’t see any reason for it to be put in areas that people might find ‘scary,’ for lack of a better word.”
Filotei, a Republican, was behind the commission’s decision late last year to take a more restrictive approach.
“I’m not sure that the city is ready for this,” Filotei said. “I’m not sure the city is prepared to handle the amount of activity that it’s going to bring.”
Filotei also said he was surprised at the lack of opposition during a public hearing.
“I don’t think we had one person against it,” Filotei said.
But rather than concluding that meant recreational cannabis has been at least accepted if not embraced by residents — the amended rules were pending on the commission’s agenda for weeks due to meeting cancellations — Filotei argued city officials did not do enough to inform the public.
Coleman said he respects Filotei’s perspective, but disagrees. He noted that Zone Bridgeport, which initially included a more welcoming approach to recreational pot, involved months of public outreach.
Coleman also noted how the zoning commission’s initial decision on legal marijuana late last year sparked “a significant community discussion” and that he and other economic development staff in late April briefed the City Council on the proposed changes passed Wednesday.
One of the council members who had in April expressed reservations in general about legalized cannabis — Maria Valle of the East Side — said Thursday she had not viewed this week’s zoning agenda. She added many officials in town are distracted by the upcoming primaries for state legislature and other important political positions.
“Me, personally, I feel marijuana leads to other, harder substance abuse,” Valle said. “I wouldn’t want that in my side of town.”
Filotei anticipated many will feel that way once individual proposals start coming to the zoning commission for approval.
“People are gonna be outraged,” he said. “They’re gonna say, ‘How could you let this happen?’”
Councilman Matthew McCarthy has founded The Dope Tax Group, which specializes in accounting for the cannabis industry. McCarthy acknowledged Thursday that some dispensary proposals might face opposition.
But, he said, dispensaries are well run, secure, and the clientele are “in and out,” spending “at most 10 minutes” purchasing items to help with pain or anxiety or to improve sleep.
“People have this idea of a dispensary as a bad thing — it’s that stigma around what they used to call a ‘drug,’” McCarthy said. “It’s the most helpful, if you will, drug out there.”
H/T: CTPost.com
click here to see the original article By, Brian Lockhart on CTPost.com
