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January 22, 2019 - 1:33 PM
ENDERBY - The City of Enderby has approved the opening of a second retail non-medical cannabis store, but said no to a third store.
Council approved the application for a non-medical cannabis retail store licence during their meeting yesterday, Jan. 21. This is the second non-medical cannabis store council has given the go ahead to, with a licence being granted to #4-802 George St. in December 2018.
The granting of approval will allow for a store to open at 612 Cliff Ave. Council had previously rejected an application from a different party for a store at 601A Cliff Ave. during their December 2018 meeting. A third application for a retail non-medical cannabis store at 900 George St. was rejected at the Jan. 21 meeting.
Enderby Mayor Greg McCune told iNFOnews.ca a new application had been received for 612 Cliff Avenue and council had approved the permit, albeit by a narrow margin of four votes to three. McCune said he voted against the granting of a licence for Cliff Avenue, as well as the approved George Street location.
McCune said he wasn't opposed to retails cannabis stores per se, but was unhappy at the way the federal government had rolled out the legalization.
He said the application for 900 George St. hadn't received support from their neighbours so was turned down by council.
The Mayor said that although there had been a large vocal opposition to the opening of retails cannabis stores in the community, there was also plenty of support and he was happy in the way council had listened to the public.
In December 2018 council granted approval for Shelley Freund and Vince Tidder, owners of the Mary Jane Resource Centre, to open a non-medical cannabis store at their current location at #4-802 George Street.
Freund said they had applied for a licence from the provincial government to open a retail non-medical cannabis store at the beginning of January and were waiting to hear back. She said she hoped to open the store in March or April.
The owner of the Mary Jane Resource Centre, which opened in February 2017 selling cannabis accessories but not cannabis itself, said the opening of two stores in Enderby wouldn't drive down the cost of cannabis as prices were largely set by the provincial government but would open up competition for different products to be sold.
— This story was corrected at 9:58 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019. An early version of this story incorrectly identified 601A Cliff Ave. as the location for the newly approved cannabis store. The correct address is 612 Cliff Ave.
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