Interested in opening a recreational marijuana store in Watertown?
The town sought more information this week on how to prepare for such facilities.
The Watertown Town Council approved unanimously a motion for the Watertown Planning Board to look into a temporary moratorium on recreational marijuana facilities Tuesday in order for the town to seek more information on how best to prepare for retail marijuana stores.
Steve Magoon, director of community development and planning, requested the motion for the moratorium. He said he has already received requests by potential marijuana retail business owners to come to Watertown.
“There is a concern for me that they might try to preemptively apply for a use,” he said. “We don’t currently directly deal with that in the ordinance so then we need to decide how to address that it’s clearly a gray area and fraught with issues. We’ll put a moratorium in place if someone is interested in bringing that use so they would have to wait until we develop the regulations and put those in place and then apply to the town.”
Cities and towns across Massachusetts are doing something similar, said Town Councilor Ken Woodland.
“To anyone who may perceive this as an attempt to keep this type of industry out of town or as a backhanded measure to slow things down: this what a lot of towns are doing,” said Woodland. “The state hasn’t come out with regulations so this isn’t a delay tactic. This is something that cities and towns are doing around the state for a very legitimate reason. We wouldn’t be able to move forward with anything for six to seven months anyway.”
Watertown should be prepared for what’s to come, Magoon says.
“Our zoning ordinance does not address this use in its various forms,” he said. “We did a similar process on establishing regulations on medicinal marijuana so similarly this is a proposal to put a temporary moratorium in place that will allow us to [create] our local regulations in regards to these uses in town prior to receiving those applications.”
The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission will have regulations on recreational marijuana in the spring.
Watertown already has a medical marijuana dispensary, Natural Selections, that plans to open early next year at 23 Elm St. after the Watertown Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously to approve its application in April, the last hurdle after several community meetings and a Town Council vote.
The company is also building out a 50,000-square-foot medical marijuana cultivation facility in Fitchburg to provide the product for the store.
credit:watertown.wickedlocal.com
