ST PAUL, Minn. — The St. Paul City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday for adult-use cannabis zoning within city limits.
“What we’ve done today is just set a zoning standard that says here is where you can consider and contemplate having those types of facilities,” said Council President Mitra Jalali.
These businesses can look at commercial real estate spaces within city limits.
“Other cities around the state frankly are rejecting the economic opportunity that’s possible saying ‘You can’t have these anywhere,’ they’re using really regressive zoning, and so I hope St. Paul can set another end of the spectrum and encourage other cities to follow suit,” Jalali said.
She said opening more of the city to cannabis operations could bring in more money.
“It’s really important to realize the economic opportunity it represents, right. We can generate and collect local sales tax. We can use that revenue to help the city in other ways,” Jalali said. “I think that we have regulatory structures in place to be able to support safety to make sure that everything is following state law. That is one of the cities rules.”
However, some people aren’t as excited. Zev Radziwall, executive director of St. Anthony Park Council, said his neighborhood is concerned cultivation facilities could impact public health.
“The biggest concern is air quality,” he said. "How do we mitigate that odor, so we don’t have the skunky smell permeating throughout neighborhoods and affecting residents.”
Jalali said there are regulations in place to control odor.
“The state law sets out a standard of how facilities have to regulate odors on and off the property line,” he said. “We took what state law said and we mirrored it into our local ordinance so the city can also be on the enforcement side of that and basically have an additional layer of regulatory support.”
Radziwall said he would have liked to see a more conservative distance including daycares. Currently, the ordinance mandates weed facilities to be at least 300 feet away from primary and secondary schools. The council talked about including daycares but decided to possibly bring up it for consideration at another time.
The ordinance would allow these businesses to cultivate and sell all under one roof. Radziwall said St. Anthony has a lot of warehouses where these businesses could potentially grow, which is why he would like to see tighter regulation.
“We hope that it’s the beginning of a conversation not the end,” he said.
Jalali said by allowing these businesses to open in more areas, it should help prevent over concentration in one area.
“Part of the logic actually in having the zoning being pretty permissive is that when you have less area that you can do these businesses in it does concentrate them, so I think what we need to do is look at the applications that come in, see if that’s shaping up in any type of way or pattern that’s cause for concern,” she said.