The Farmacy, a medical marijuana dispensary looking to move in to a storefront along the 700 block of Chapala Street, cleared a major hurdle towards becoming a reality this week despite continued controversy swirling around them and the medical marijuana issue at large.
On Wednesday morning, October 7, Susan Reardon, a hearing officer with the Santa Barbara City Planning Department, gave the club’s unique cannabis and wellness-center hybrid business model the green light to do business, wedged between two popular eateries and beneath 29 residential apartments, on the street level of the mixed use Paseo Chapala building.
Knowingly making her ruling at a time when the City’s Ordinance Committee actively grapples with revising Santa Barbara’s medical marijuana laws, Reardon opined, “I have an existing ordinance right now and I have procedures that we follow:And this application meets those requirements.”