Business pushes back against Vernon’s downtown cannabis store cap

The City of Vernon is set to reconsider its cap on downtown pot shops following an appeal from Calgary-based Cannabis Cowboy Inc.

Last April, Vernon City Council decided to cap the number of cannabis shops at six for Vernon’s two downtown business improvement areas, for at least one year.

The move resulted in Cannabis Cowboy’s plans for a marijuana shop in Vernon’s Fruit Union Plaza being thrown into limbo, they say.

The business says their application for regulatory approval was placed on hold by the city since the cap was put in place, but they, and the landlord at the strip-mall, argue the decision was unfair since Cannabis Cowboy rented a space and started is application months before the cap was announced.

Cannabis Cowboy said it has already spent more than $217,000, including more than $173,000 in rent, on the business venture and might not have rented a location at the Fruit Union Plaza in 2018 “had [they] known that the cap was going to be assigned or had [their] application been denied earlier on in the process.”

The company is arguing the six store cap should only apply to the primary business improvement area around Vernon’s 30th Avenue and not to the secondary business improvement area where their proposed shop would be located.

In a letter to Vernon’s mayor, the shop’s landlord at Fruit Union Plaza Ralph Woessner called the restriction on stores in the business improvement area “arbitrary and random” and agreed that the strip-mall shouldn’t be included in the cap.

Woessner pointed out that if the Cannabis Cowboy’s store can’t go ahead it would also create problems for the strip-mall which has a high vacancy rate and is already finding it tough to find new tenants.

The cap was originally put in place to prevent a large number of shops close together in Vernon’s downtown core.

“We had a lot of people tell us they don’t want to see downtown as a cannabis dispensary area, shop after shop,” said councillor Akbal Mund, in April.

“We’ve had a lot of residents and business owners complain about how many dispensaries we had in the past. I think we had nine in the downtown area.”

Cannabis Cowboy and the landlord argue that having the cannabis shop in Fruit Union Plaza wouldn’t contribute to concerns about Vernon seeing a large cluster of pot shops downtown because it would be far enough away from 30th Avenue, and would be a much different retail atmosphere.

Cannabis Cowboy said their proposed shop is 259 metres from the nearest cannabis shop that has already received civic approval.

When contacted by Global News Sunday, Mund said he does not support changing the cap at this time because he believes stores operating without provincial licences in other jurisdictions are selling their products at lower prices and as a result he expects consumers will shop outside of Vernon.

According to Vernon’s City Council agenda, on Monday council will consider a recommendation to change the cap on downtown stores so it only applies to shops in the primary business improvement area.

That would allow Cannabis Cowboy’s application to move ahead in the regulatory process.

However, even if that change is made, there would still be a city-wide two year moratorium on new applications for more cannabis shops.

In July the city said it wouldn’t process applications from any new proposed pot shops that hadn’t already applied for provincial approval. That moratorium wouldn’t impact Cannabis Cowboy as it started its provincial application in February.

Private cannabis shops need both provincial and local government approvals get a licence to operate in B.C.

Global News has reached out to Vernon’s mayor for comment.