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The VC Star
It’s been nearly three years since Ventura voters approved a ballot measure that city leaders said would lead to licensed cannabis dispensaries in town, and nine months since the city picked three dispensaries to receive the first permits.
But Ventura still lacks a legal retail outlet for cannabis, and neither the dispensaries that were chosen nor the ones that were passed over are happy.
The five finalists that didn’t win last year’s competitive licensing process appealed the city’s decision, and the appeal process has dragged on for more than six months. In late June, the three businesses that won filed a lawsuit against the city, asking for a court order that would end the appeals and force the city to issue them permits.
In the meantime, those three operators are moving toward opening, with “coming soon” and “now hiring” signs up in one location’s windows, though they can’t actually open until they have their permits in hand. The other five dispensary operators are in talks with the city over potentially expanding the initial round of permits.
Ventura city officials would not comment on the matter, citing the pending lawsuit.
The city always planned to issue five retail permits, with the first three in the non-coastal areas of Ventura, and another two later in the coastal zone, if the California Coastal Commission agrees. In December, the City Council considered licensing five dispensaries right away, which would have allowed two of the companies that missed out to obtain permits, but ultimately voted to keep the total at three for now.
One of the initial three winners was The Artist Tree, which operates six other dispensaries in California, including the first one to open in Oxnard. In Ventura, The Artist Tree has a lease on a building at the Five Points intersection in midtown, near Community Memorial Hospital. The shop plans to start renovating it as soon as it has its city permit.
Laura Fontein, the chief compliance officer at The Artist Tree and one its owners and founders, said the process was much smoother in the other cities where the company operates, including Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Fresno.
Ventura and Oxnard are in “kind of a tie” for the most cumbersome and time-consuming permit process, she said. Both cities had the same problem: an inability to resolve appeals quickly and award permits once the decision had been made.
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Sean Hocking
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