While the populace voted to legalize the use of medical marijuana in Arizona, and the creation of dispensaries and cultivation sites to provide medical marijuana to such authorized users, the implementation of this new law has been left to the Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS) and to Cities and Counties throughout the state. AZDHS has promulgated state-wide regulations that provide for such things as minimum distances from schools, churches, public parks and residences. However, for dispensaries and cultivation sites, the process doesn’t stop there. Depending upon whether they choose to establish their operations, the dispensary or cultivation business must comply with the local zoning ordinances and obtain permission to operate at the chosen location.
The problem is that each governing body handles the zoning and use issues differently. For example, many municipalities deem the use of the property as a medical marijuana dispensary to be automatically permitted so long as the property is zoned for commercial (or industrial) use and the property meets the state-required minimum distances from schools, parks, churches and residences. The City of Phoenix proves the exception to this rule, though, requiring a dispensary to obtain a use permit even where the property is zoned for a commercial operation. Further, before a medical marijauan dispensary can apply for the use permit, it has to first obtain from the City a “pre-registration,” and among other requirements it must provide as part of the permit process a floor plan for the site and a survey map showing the property location and the location of churches, schools, parks and residences in the area. Also, the proposed site cannot be within 1 mile of another proposed dispensary or proposed dispensary (information that likely is only known to the City’s Planning and Development department presently).
But the part that will likely catch many applicants by surprise is that the “pre-registration” is valid for 90 days, may be extended only once for an additional 30 days, and cannot be renewed. Meanwhile, during this limited period the applicant has to obtain a use permit (which requires a hearing following a 60-day notice period), a construction permit for the required tenant improvements, a dispensary license from AZDHS, and a certificate of occupancy. That’s a lot to accomplish in a mere 90 days. Meanwhile, the limited number of CHAAs results in a competing process to obtain a dispensary license within the CHAA, and one of the requirements for obtaining the license is that the dispensary have approval from the governing body for the property (i.e., the City). It appears the City of Phoenix may not be issuing “pre-approval” letters but only Use Permits, which means that the Use Permit process may have to be completed prior to submitting the application for a dispensary license.
In other words, if you hope to operate a dispensary within the City of Phoenix, you may already be too late. It appears that some of the proposed dispensaries started the process of locating a property and culling together the requirements for the Use Permit and such many months ago, before the AZDHS regulations were finalized (and perhaps even before the City of Phoenix finalized its regulations and processes for medical-marijuana dispensaries). The rest of the applicants are under a severe time pressure to obtain all of the requirements before the June application submission process, and may ultimately be left to wait to see whether their CHAA remains available after the first round of applicants for licenses have been processed.