Cannabis dispensaries OK'd

After thorough questioning of company representatives, Findlay City Planning Commission approved plans Thursday for cannabis dispensaries on the city's east and west sides. One, Trulieve, will be at 1501 West Main Cross Street, west of Interstate 75 and east of Pilgrim Restaurant. It is currently the site of Guaranteed Auto Dealer. The other, Curaleaf, will be at 2205 Tiffin Avenue, across the street from Meijer. It is currently the site of a Dollar General. Their clients include people using cannabis for medical or recreational purposes. Curaleaf could be open by December, Jacob Throneburg, senior manager of Real Estate Strategy/Development for Curaleaf, said after the meeting. Representatives of Trulieve were less certain of an opening date. City planners were friendly. At the same time their questions resonated with caution over approving something that only recently was generally illegal and associated with hedonism and potential harm. Neighbors of both proposed dispensaries had sent letters expressing opposition. "What does this look like? How does it fit into the neighborhood? What does security look like?" asked Mayor Christina Muryn, chairman of the commission. Would the dispensaries reek of cannabis' acrid odor? Both buildings will have what one of the companies' representatives described as a "fairly sterile" design. "There are no neon signs," Throneburg said. "The state highly regulates the design of these buildings, so it's not a free-for-all." Both companies have scores of outlets, thousands of employees in multiple states, so their representatives came prepared for the scrutiny. "One big, key factor that a lot of you have questions about is, there is absolutely zero onsite consumption," Throneburg said. "It's not allowed … All of the product is sealed." So there would be next to no odor, he said to reassure the mayor. "Essentially zero odor around the store," Throneburg said. "The only way that you're going to get odor is if you enter the building and go past the vestibule and maybe you could smell a slight hint of it on the sales floor." Clients would not be able to touch any product until they purchased it, representatives of both companies said. All of the products are in sealed packages which are stored in a vault – "I believe it is 8-inch, 10-inch thick concrete walls, so it is very secure. The smell is very contained" – Throneburg said. Are the vaults ventilated? asked commission member Dan Clinger. Both companies answered in the affirmative. More angles to probe Muryn pointed out that Curaleaf will be using only 58% of the 8,199 square feet of the West Main Cross building. Do they have a plan for what will go into the remaining space? Curaleaf does not have a plan currently, Throneburg said. It will lease only the space it needs to minimize expenses. It is working with a developer who will buy the building and lease the remaining space to a second tenant, he said. That tenant would have to get planning commission approval before it could open, but Curaleaf does not yet know who the second tenant would be, he said. The tension about that uncertainty lingered for city officials even as they moved on to other questions about other issues. Minutes later, Hancock Regional Planning Commission Director Matt Cordonnier returned to what must have been an elephant in the room. "What would be your idea of an ideal co-tenant?" he asked. "My concern is that it's Crazy Eddie's Wild Bong Shop." That drew laughter from planning commission members and others in the room. Cordonnier wasn't just cracking a joke. "You have a restriction on how you look," he said, referring to state regulations on Curaleaf. That would not necessarily be true of Curaleaf's co-tenant, Cordonnier pointed out. "I wouldn't want the co-tenant to be something like that (Crazy Eddie's Wild Bong Shop) that is unrestricted," Cordonnier said. "I don't think you want that either. But I just want to have that discussion." Throneburg said he did not see Cordonnier's fears becoming reality. "It (a bong shop) obviously conflicts with what we do," he said. "I would think a coffee shop, a sandwich shop" would be more likely. Because Throneburg and Curaleaf went first, they faced the front line of city planners' scrutiny. When Trulieve's representatives got their turn, they gave largely the same answers. They added a few things. "Our facilities are treated and designed more like a medical facility," one Trulieve official told the planning commission. People must be at least 21 years old to enter its sales floor, Trulieve's representatives said. It has security cameras operating 24/7 inside and outside its store. No loitering is permitted before or after transactions. About 40% of cannabis transactions in Ohio are online, a Trulieve official said. When that online transaction occurs with Trulieve, the client is given a specific time to show up at the dispensary. "That somewhat moderates traffic at any of the dispensaries," he said.