The city of Grand Junction’s marijuana business license approval process has frustrated citizens and potential business owners, who are waiting for the city to finish the application process and eventual lottery to decide who gets a license.
“We have no idea when or if it’s going to happen,” one applicant, High Q Rockies CEO Renee Grossman, said.
Grossman, who was on the advisory committee for the city’s marijuana regulations, said applicants are having to weigh the potential value of receiving a license with cutting their losses, especially because they have had to secure space for their potential stores in order to get their applications approved.
“Paying on an empty space, where you don’t know if you’re going to get a license, it’s expensive,” Grossman said.
Grossman said she has been paying rent on a property since July, 2021.
“It is a larger city and we know the processes are challenging, but I think we didn’t expect it to take this long,” Grossman said.
Scott Beilfuss, a Grand Junction resident who also served on the advisory committee, has been critical of the city’s pace in approving licenses. Previously, he thought the slow pace could be the fault of the appointed hearing officer, Stephanie Rubinstein. After attending a hearing, however, Beilfuss said it’s clear the city is at fault.
“I think there’s some systemic issues in the city coming out of this whole thing,” Beilfuss said.
Beilfuss, who announced his candidacy for city council on Friday, said the attitude from the original committee was to not re-invent the wheel and get businesses up and running quickly, but the exact opposite has happened.
“The whole community is frustrated with this whole thing,” Beilfuss said. “Why are we making this such a nightmare for local people?”
Voters approved a measure allowing recreational marijuana stores in the city in April, 2021. After a few false starts, City Council approved the process by which licenses would be chosen in May, 2022.
Applicants will be chosen via a lottery. In order to get into that lottery, applicants must have insurance, a property in which to have the store, a sales tax license for the business, pass background checks, have a security plan, a business plan, a plan for keeping underage people off the premises, a plan for disposing of unsold cannabis, a ventilation plan, and disclose their financial interests and pay application and licensing fees.
During the application period, which closed June 8, 2022, the city received 47 applications, 29 of which have been approved for the lottery so far.
A total of 10 applicants will be given licenses, including no more than two in the Horizon Drive Business District.
After applications were filed, they were examined by city staff, and also went through a public hearing process.
The city is in the latter stages of the public hearing process, with some who have been denied appealing through the district court system. Once that process is complete, the lottery can go forward, but the city of Grand Junction has not said when that might be.
The drawn-out nature of the process has led to frustration among some of the applicants, some of whom have had to pay rent or otherwise leave empty commercial space while waiting for the process to play out.
“It’s frustrating and expensive,” one of the applicants, local attorney Joe Coleman, said in an email. “The delay risks running small guys out and benefiting the out-of- town applicants already in the business. Finally, it reflects poorly on an otherwise properly run city.“
Coleman and his son Joey Coleman had their application for the Kai Dispensary approved early on.
The city of Grand Junction declined to answer questions regarding the process, instead releasing a statement, which read:
“The City of Grand Junction’s Cannabis Business Licensing applicants have been reviewed and currently, 29 applicants have been approved to participate in a randomized selection process for the available 10 licenses from the City. Two applicants are pending approval while four have been denied and notified by mail with an opportunity to appeal. One applicant is in the process of an appeal from the District Court. The City ensures a just and due process for all applicants and allows enough time for appropriate actions to occur. If an applicant(s) are approved in the District Court, the process will return to the beginning stages for review. Once the approval stage is complete, a randomized selection process will be conducted and applicants will receive 14 days’ notice before the selection date.”
