Locals in Fresno, California block the opening of a cannabis store

After doing their best to meet compliance criteria, residents of Pinedale, a Fresno, California neighborhood, gathered at Fresno City Hall to appeal a permit and demand officials stop opening one planned retail cannabis location for adult use.

Residents appealed Embarc’s Cannabis Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for a proposed site at a Fresno Planning Commission meeting Aug. 16. The stigma surrounding cannabis lingers in many smaller communities across California.

Embarc CEO Lauren Carpenter proposed opening a pharmacy at 7363 N. Blackstone Ave. which is home to approximately 15 other retailers, and had complied with the requirements of being 1,000 feet away from Pinedale Elementary School in accordance with local regulations. The store also met necessary safety regulations and metropolitan parking requirements.

However, local residents still complained that the smell of weed would fill the nearby mall and that armed guards would be a nuisance. The distance of the pharmacy from the school at 300 meters (according to local compliance regulations) was still too close for easily influenced school children.

The Pinedale Matters community group and the Clovis Unified School District have issued letters demanding that the proposal be dropped. The attempt to appeal the permit worked.

“Embarc had every rule, every regulation, every code — everything that this company would need to be compliant,” Carpenter told the High Times. “Twenty-six regulators have all determined that we are fully compliant. By being granted our license, we are obliged to operate in the second district, including the location verified by the authorities and district offices.”

“Our business model is based on spending weeks, months and years collaborating with community members who support and oppose cannabis,” Carpenter continues.

Monica Diaz, a member of the planning commission, told GV Wire that the store owners did everything they could to meet criteria set by the City of Fresno for opening a dispensary. “She’s got it all covered, there’s nothing anyone could say she doesn’t,” Diaz said of Carpenter.

With two Pinedale residents appealing Embarc’s CUP, representatives were forced to appeal to the Planning Commission.

“Fear is a far more powerful motivator than facts,” says Carpenter. “I find it shocking to see that a planning commission, by its own admission [deny a business that was] fully consistent with the process that our city has created. The commissioners recognize that.”

However, others disagreed and believed regulated pharmacies were safe. Five Pinedale residents spoke out in favor of Embarc, saying the store would actually make the neighborhood safer. The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union also spoke out in favor of Embarc.

The meeting lasted until 9:55 p.m., and the planning committee was running out of time. Planning commission members unanimously agreed to deny the permit, calling the site “damaging” to the neighborhood. Haley Wagner, member of the Planning Commission, was not present at the meeting.

Fresno and cannabis for adult use

The city has been slow to develop retail cannabis locations for adult use. In March, Fresno ran a budget deficit of over $3 million, due in part to the city’s slow opening of cannabis dispensaries.

Embarc and The Artist Tree opened in the Fresno area on the same day in July 2022. The remaining companies that have been granted provisional licenses have submitted their applications for CUPs, which must be approved before building permits can be issued and construction or renovation of the site can begin.

Proposition 64 legalized cannabis for adult use in California in 2016. In 2018, Fresno voters passed an ordinance taxing the retail sale of recreational cannabis, paving the way for the opening of adult-use cannabis dispensaries in the city.

In 2019, the Fresno City Council amended the civic ordinances regulating recreational cannabis, and in 2021 the city began issuing the first of 19 preliminary retail licenses for cannabis dispensaries to date.

Officials in Fresno are reviewing multiple jurisdictions for potential solutions to the city’s slow rollout of adult-use stores and are considering several options to expedite the opening of additional retailers in the city.

Pinedale was formerly an unincorporated town in Fresno County, but has since been surrounded and annexed by the City of Fresno.