STAMFORD – The city has its fourth marijuana retailer, with regulatory room now for only one more.
The Zoning Board has unanimously approved a hotly contested application by Nautilus Botanicals to operate at 1308 East Main St., now site of The Boat Yard BBQ & Grill on the Darien border.
Member Bill Morris expressed the sentiment of his colleagues when the chair, David Stein, asked for a sense of the board before calling for a vote.
“Unfortunately, it meets the regulations, so I would have to vote yes,” Morris said.
Fellow member Rosanne McManus said the same.
“It doesn’t break the regulations, so I’m a yes, too,” said member Gerry Bosak Jr.
“There’s nothing in the regulations that would cause us to not approve it,” said member Racquel Smith-Anderson.
“I agree,” Stein said.
Their reluctant “yes” votes follow months of deliberations that include their rejection of Nautilus Botanical’s first choice for a marijuana shop at 1110 East Main St., near Interstate-95’s Exit 9.
The board cited traffic concerns and inadequate parking as reasons to reject that site. Nautilus then sued the board, but said it would drop the matter if the The Boat Yard site were approved.
Board deliberations on The Boat Yard site were drawn out by a public hearing that extended from one meeting to the next. It drew so much opposition that Stamford and Darien residents filled a room at nearby Giovanni’s restaurant for a “watch party” to call in their comments on Zoom.
No pot in the lot
Residents said the marijuana shop would add to an intersection already heavily trafficked by vehicles and pedestrians; that Nautilus customers would smoke marijuana in the parking lot; and that it should be rejected because school buses stop nearby and the site abuts single-family homes. Darien residents said it’s too close to the YMCA, an elementary school, and three church-run preschools in their town.
Zoning Board members tried to address residents’ concerns by setting conditions for the approval.
Before Nautilus is issued a building permit, it must submit plans showing the addition of a driveway on the north side of the building to avoid traffic backups; submit a landscaping plan to screen the rear of the property from houses; hire a security guard to manage traffic and deter loitering; ensure a security guard clears the parking lot each day at closing time; and require Nautilus to close off the parking lot after business hours.
It’s not the outcome he’d hoped for, said Lyle Fishell, president of the Cove Neighborhood Association, which arranged the “watch party” at Giovanni’s restaurant.
“If the zoning regulations allow it, they allow it. What can you do?” Fishell said.
The regulations prohibit marijuana retail shops within 1,000 feet of a school, and “it should be the same for a municipal property line, especially if the municipality does not allow marijuana sales,” which Darien does not, Fishell said.
He questioned implementation of the Stamford Zoning Board rule that allows one marijuana retailer for every 25,000 residents, which sets the cap at five.
“The five should be distributed equally throughout the city,” Fishell said. “We should not have three so close together.”
CuraLeaf operates half a mile down East Main Street from the Nautilus site, and Fine Fettle is less than 2 miles away in a Glenbrook/Springdale industrial park. A third marijuana retailer, Sweetspot, is set to open at Bull’s Head this summer.
Mayor not ‘at the forefront’
Darien First Selectman Jon Zagrodzky said the Zoning Board decision is “short-sighted.”
“No good can come of this. It will negatively affect businesses and property values in Darien,” Zagrodzky said. “When Stamford decided to approve cannabis sales, they did not make a provision to protect neighboring communities that prohibit it. The fact that Stamford decided to allow one that is less than a 10-second walk from the Darien border … is really unfortunate.”
His concern is that a marijuana shop is “an easy avenue for these products to get in the hands of high school students … they cannot go in and buy marijuana themselves, but they get it. Let’s not kid ourselves – this is next to Darien and that’s a place to make money.”
Zagrodzky said he reached out to Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons to discuss the Nautilus application but did not hear back.
“Later I saw her at a breakfast in Stamford. She said her husband is materially involved in the cannabis industry and her attorneys advised her not to say anything about this,” Zagrodzky said. “The fact that she is not at the forefront of this is unfortunate but understandable, given her husband’s work.”
Simmons’ husband, former Republican state Sen. Art Linares, is a founder and owner of Rodeo Cannabis, a farm in Litchfield County with a production facility in Sterling in eastern Connecticut. The company is seeking to open a retail store in Shelton.
Simmons’ spokesperson, Lauren Meyer, said the “characterization of the mayor’s comments are not accurate.”
Simmons “respects the Zoning Board approval process and does not get involved in any individual applications and decisions,” Meyer said in an email.
One year, three suits
For the Zoning Board and marijuana retailers, it’s been a year of contention. Retailers have sued the board three times.
Sweetspot at 111 High Ridge Road sued after board members rejected its application out of concern for traffic and proximity to businesses that serve children. The parties then settled. Sweetspot is set to open in August.
Nautilus sued after the board rejected its initial application for 1110 East Main St. The suit is pending. It remains to be seen whether the company will drop it now that the 1308 East Main St. site has been approved.
Budr Cannabis sued this month after the board rejected its application for 389 West Main St., saying the site was too close to a community center. Budr has a second application for a site at 2041 West Main St. on the Greenwich line.
James Calver of Stamford spoke out strongly against the Nautilus Botanicals application for his Cove neighborhood, bordering Darien.
“I am enormously disappointed,” Calver said of the vote. “It would seem to me that the board made a decision without regard to the regulations,” which state that special permits such as the one Nautilus got shall be granted only if the proposed use is not “injurious to the neighborhood” and does not disturb “the health, safety or peaceful enjoyment of property.”
“None of those things is in place,” Calver said. “I don’t know what regulations they think they were adhering to, but it’s not in any way harmonious with neighbors and has no regard for safety. We had 1,200 people opposing this across two meetings. How could going against them be in harmony with the neighborhood?”
‘The weed destination’
Cove resident Gina Calabrese, another outspoken opponent of the Nautilus application, said Stamford has handled recreational sales of marijuana backwards.
“The Planning Board and the Zoning Board knew these applications were coming, and instead of getting regulations in place, they started entertaining applications using the regulations they had,” Calabrese said. “They decided to apply to marijuana dispensaries the regulations they had for medical dispensaries. It might have been better to apply the regulations for adult-oriented businesses, which would have kept marijuana dispensaries away from peoples’ homes.”
Now three of the five retailers are within two miles of each other, Calabrese said.
“When they decided to allow five marijuana dispensaries in Stamford, they should have drafted a standard that would not allow them to be concentrated in one area. Why not one in Harbor Point?” she said. “If one were proposed for North Stamford, people would come out in droves against it, and they likely would be respected. But now people will be getting off I-95 to buy marijuana in the working- and middle-class Cove and East Side, because their neighborhood is the weed destination in Stamford.”