Those hoping to put a retail cannabis store in the north end of Guelph say it shouldn't be rejected because a proposed youth mental health hub is planned for next door.
In fact representatives of those looking to put a pot store at 739 Woolwich Ave. said at a city Committee of Adjustment meeting Thursday that the pot store should be no more of a concern than the Beer Store already across the street.
The owners of the property have made an application for a minor variance that would clear the way for a cannabis store and allow them to sell the property to the numbered company looking to set up a 2,500 square-foot outlet.
The location currently houses a flower shop and small greenhouse on the north side of Woolwich Street just north of the main entrance to Riverside Park.
The Canadian Mental Health Association is in the process of establishing a three story youth mental health hub on the adjacent property, where the old McDonald's stood for many years.
They hope to break ground in May or June.
At the end of the day the issue was deferred after the six-person Committee of Adjustment had a tie vote on whether to allow it. It will go back to staff and back to the committee at a future meeting.
"It will be a very, very busy building," Helen Fishburne, Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Waterloo Wellington, said of the youth mental health hub that is being called the Centre for Children's Developmental & Mental Health Services.
The CMHA is "really opposed" to a cannabis store setting up shop next door, she said, adding a cannabis store "creates a real potential for influence."
"We really just can't have it next to our building," Fishburne said.
Douglas Stewart, a planner appearing on behalf of the applicant, said the Committee of Adjustment should "focus on the planning perspective, not the emotional part."
He pointed to the Beer Store across the street.
"To say a beer store is acceptable or okay and to say a cannabis store is not, I'm not sure I understand what the distinction is," Stewart told the committee.
On a planning level, city staff supported the variance application, given the recommended use fit in with the city's vision for the property.
While the land use may be approved, on a planning level some feel the use is incompatible with the fact 9,000 youth annually between the ages of 0 and 25 are expected to use the wide array of services that the CMHA plans to offer at its new three-storey, 52,000 square-foot hub.
David Wiedrick, the city's manager of bylaw compliance, said the ultimate decision on whether a pot business is suitable in that location might lay with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO).
If a cannabis store is permitted as a use for the property, the city can object to it getting a business licence, but it does not have the power to prevent it from opening if the AGCO approves it.
