Pubdate: Wed, 13 Nov 2013
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold

CITY HOLDS FIRST PUBLIC HEARING

The Grove's Request for a Meeting in Denver Is Greeted With Little Fanfare.

To little fanfare, Denver on Tuesday held its first public hearing 
for a marijuana business seeking to open a recreational pot shop.

The 9 a.m. hearing - for a store called The Grove, at West First 
Avenue and Federal Boulevard-lasted less than an hour, said Larry 
Stevenson of Denver's Department of Excise and Licenses. The store's 
owner and a handful of employees spoke in favor of the store's 
application. No one spoke in opposition, said Mike Elliott, the 
executive director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group, who 
attended the hearing.

"It was short and sweet," Elliott said.

The hearings are required for businesses seeking to open recreational 
marijuana stores in Denver, under rules the City Council approved 
earlier this year. They are being held in a former courtroom in the 
Denver City and County Building - a room that still has the stencil 
"Criminal Matters" on the door.

The hearings are intended to give residents a chance to voice 
concerns about the store's possible impact on safety, public health 
and the neighborhood's overall welfare. The hearings, though, are 
less strict than those for a liquor license - which examine whether a 
neighborhood needs or wants such a business.

Until 2016, only people who currently own an existing 
medical-marijuana store can apply to open a recreational pot shop in 
Denver, and the new store must stay in the same spot as the medical dispensary.

Justin Jones, one of the owners of the Dank Colorado dispensary on 
Elm Street in northeast Denver, had been scheduled for the city's 
second public hearing Tuesday afternoon. But he'll have to wait a 
little longer, though. Because of a lapse by the city's publisher of 
official notices, the notice for Jones' hearing wasn't published on 
time. That means he had to reschedule his hearing for later in the year.

"It is what it is," Jones said.

He said he plans to split his store into two, with one side serving 
medical-marijuana patients 18 and older and the other serving 
recreational customers 21 and up. He was one of the first to submit 
his application Oct. 1, when the application window opened.

"We've really tried to be out front with everything," he said Tuesday.

Denver has 16 more hearings scheduled through the end of November.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom