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Del Norte County supervisors authorized staff to begin expanding areas where cannabis can be manufactured and sold to the public.

The area proposed for Del Norte’s expanded Cannabis Combining District include Smith River both inside and outside the coastal zone, according to Deputy County Counsel Joel Campbell-Blair.

Campbell-Blair presented supervisors with four options on Tuesday. The first included expanding the Cannabis Combining District to commercial areas outside the coastal zone from the Oregon border to the Smith River and east to the Smith River National Recreation Area. It would provide space for retail and manufacturing cannabis, according to Campbell-Blair.

The second option would include commercial areas within the coastal zone in Smith River and would add a commercial-recreation zone, according to Campbell-Blair. Cannabis retail and manufacturing would need a permit from the California Coastal Commission to operate under this option, according to Campbell-Blair.

The second option also included an area between the Crescent City Harbor and the old Beachcomber Restaurant at 1400 U.S. 101 South.

Campbell-Blair’s third option was a combination of the first two options. A fourth option would be to do nothing, he told supervisors.

“A lot of this comes down to how much the Board wants to open things up,” Campbell-Blair said. “Nothing opens up Hiouchi, Gasquet or Klamath; just Smith River north of the river up to the Oregon border.”

Though they balked at including the area south of Crescent City in the Cannabis Combining District, supervisors directed Campbell-Blair to move forward with the third option.

“I don’t want to see people coming down off that hill and seeing a sign that says, ‘Weed here!’’ District 5 Supervisor Bob Berkowitz told Campbell-Blair. “That’s a bad first impression to get of Del Norte County. That just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

Approved in November 2018, the current ordinance allows cannabis retail and manufacturing in existing buildings in the light commercial, central business, general commercial and manufacturing and industrial districts in the unincorporated Crescent City urban area.

The proprietor must obtain a use permit from the Del Norte County Planning Commission. The ordinance prohibits cannabis retailers and manufacturers to be located within a 1,000 foot radius of a school or youth center and within 1,000 feet of another cannabis retailer.

At the Board of Supervisors’ Sept. 10 meeting, Patti McCauley requested a variance for her cannabis business, saying the current ordinance was so restrictive, it unintentionally created a monopoly. She had hoped to operate a retail outlet on Northcrest Drive, but told supervisors in September that there’s no available space under the county’s current ordinance.

During the board’s discussion in September, District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard said constituents had approached him about whether zones outside the Crescent City urban area would be appropriate for cannabis retail.

On Tuesday, Campbell-Blair also brought up the option of relaxing the requirements in the existing ordinance, particularly the 1,000 foot buffers between a cannabis manufacturer and a school or youth center and between one cannabis proprietor and another.

Howard said he met with Campbell-Blair and the county’s community development director, Heidi Kunstal, to discuss changing Del Norte’s current zoning for cannabis. Howard said he favored looking at both options 1 and 2, noting there were a lot of vacant buildings on U.S. 101 that would be suitable for a cannabis manufacturing or retail operation.

District 1 Supervisor Roger Gitlin, who said he was skeptical about expanding the Cannabis Combining District, wanted to take “baby steps.” He said he liked the idea of restricting cannabis manufacturing and retail to existing buildings, limiting the investment a potential proprietor would have to make. Gitlin also wanted to exclude the area south of the Crescent City Harbor and disagreed with reducing the buffer zones around schools and between one cannabis retailer and another.

“We can always review this, but right now (there’s) only one shop in all of the community,” he said. “Let’s take a small step, not a wider step, but a small step in one direction involving buildings that are already vacant in Smith River.”

Gitlin’s colleague, Board Chairwoman Lori Cowan noted that if the California Coastal Commission is involved the process of expanding the Cannabis Combining District to include coastal areas of Smith River will be slow.

Cowan, whose family operates North Coast Grill, which includes a children’s camp in addition to the restaurant at the Crescent City Harbor, didn’t want to see a cannabis retail or manufacturing business at South Beach.

“I’m not OK with leaving it up to chance, that it goes to the Planning Commission and they say it’s close enough,” Cowan said. “To me, I don’t want it around kids.”

On Tuesday, McCauley asked that the 1,000-foot radius buffer zone around multiple cannabis operations be stricken from the ordinance since it’s not in state regulations. She also noted that people aren’t going to want to build new structures.

“We need as many buildings that are vacant occupied, so when people come through our town … it actually looks like we’re a productive town,” she said. “As far as signage. Signage isn’t permitted, so nobody’s going to know it’s a dispensary anyway.”

Robert Derego, who owns Wonder Stump, the only operating dispensary in the county, asked supervisors to fix the ordinance to allow people already in the business to operate and allow cultivators to grow. He noted that there are nine retailers in Oregon selling cannabis for cheaper than he can purchase wholesale and said it’s counter productive to make people go through a lot of hurdles to operate.

“…we’re right up against a state that wanted to be the pre-eminent pot source of America,” Derego said. “It’s tough for this side of the border to compete with a completely different market and operate a compliant program.”

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