Kenai’s City Council, during their last meeting on July 3, unanimously approved a resolution asking the state not to issue a retail marijuana store license for Canna Get Happy’s proposed Kenai location.
According to the resolution, Canna Get Happy owner Sandra Millhouse is seeking to open a location in Kenai at 11888 Kenai Spur Highway, in the strip mall-esque building adjacent to the Salvation Army. To that end, she has applied for a license from the State Marijuana Control Board.
The structure, City Manager Terry Eubank said during the meeting, is called Swanson Square.
A memo attached to the resolution by Planning Director Linda Mitchell says that Millhouse applied to the city for a conditional use permit in February, but her application was rejected because the property “does not meet certain buffering distances.” Without the permit, Millhouse hasn’t met the city’s requirements for operation and shouldn’t be allowed to obtain the license, the memo says.
During the meeting on Wednesday, Mitchell further explained that the buffering requirements for marijuana establishments are measured from the nearest wall or door to the outer boundaries of various public or youth facilities. In a multi-tenant building like Swanson Square, it’s measured across the entire structure, not just the boundaries of an individual suite.
The building, Mitchell said, is within 500-feet buffers of both the Steve Shearer Memorial Ball Park and the Kenai Little League Fields.
Millhouse told the council that she’s a fourth-generation Alaskan who recently bought a home on the Kenai Peninsula. She owns and runs Canna Get Happy locations in Anchorage, Wasilla and on Kalifornsky Beach Road.
When she was looking at a location in Kenai, she found Swanson Square, which was available for purchase. She said she didn’t want to buy it unless she could open a dispensary there. Millhouse said she visited Kenai’s Planning Department to do her “due diligence.” She said the department did the measuring that same day and reported to Millhouse that a dispensary would be allowed at the location.
“I flew to Oregon, with cash, paid for the mall,” she said. “Paid and turned in for the Kenai permit. After a couple of weeks, I hadn’t been called back, so I reached out to them. They apologized and said to me that they were sorry, that they had measured wrong and they had told me incorrectly about being able to purchase the property for this purpose.”
Millhouse told the council she was looking for permission to operate a facility there or help in changing the buffer zone code.
Vice Mayor Henry Knackstedt said that he was in support of asking the state not to issue the license. He also said he was interested in seeing development in the area, but said the responsibility for changing the code would largely fall on Millhouse.
“The building’s probably been in Kenai as long as I have, and it’s been distressed for about half that time,” he said. “I think that the applicant probably needs to step up and work with the planner and see what could be done. Perhaps it’s not something we have the appetite to do, but I think that would be the way to more forward.”
City Attorney Scott Bloom said that a variance to city code would be insufficient to allow Canna Get Happy to operate at the location. He said it would likely require the passage of an ordinance that changes the buffer distances.
“We have denied prior businesses from operating commercial retail marijuana establishments in this place,” he said.
In September 2017, the city council defeated an ordinance changing how the 500-foot buffers are measured. Had it passed, that ordinance would have measured the buffers by pedestrian routes in certain cases — leaving measurements for school buffers unaltered, but changing the straight-line measurement cases where a marijuana business is over 200 feet from a buffered property and lies on the other side of a public right of way.
That ordinance was brought forward after the owners of Majestic Gardens — which now operates further down the Kenai Spur Highway — had their originally planned location in Swanson Square rejected in June 2016.
Clarion reporting in 2017 said that Swanson Square was found to be 455 feet north of the Kenai Little League fields — but across the Kenai Spur Highway — and 438 feet from the Steve Shearer Memorial Ball Fields. The ball fields property, though, includes wooded areas without any areas or structures used for recreation — Swanson Square is around 1,300 feet away from the closest ball field.
That property is also oddly shaped. A small strip crosses Coral Street and connects two large sections — the ball fields themselves and a space filled only by woods.
According to a written decision by the city council in response to an appeal by the owners of Majestic Gardens in September 2016, “(the owners) argued that the ball fields themselves were over a thousand feet from their proposed business location, the lot containing the ball fields was very large and oddly shaped in such a manner to make application of a measurement to the edge of the parcel and not the ball fields themselves unfair.”
Had the ordinance passed, Swanson Square would have been made a viable location for a marijuana retailer.
The city council on Wednesday unanimously approved the resolution asking the state not to issue a license for Canna Get Happy in Kenai at Swanson Square but did not rule out further action.
“I think at this point, it’s appropriate to vote yes on this to protest,” Mayor Brian Gabriel said. “Beyond that, I think that dealing with any change to buffers is a separate issue.”
A full recording of the meeting can be found at kenai.city/citycouncil.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
