It was, as Mayor Helene Schneider put it, “an intense but important discussion” that dominated this Tuesday’s City Council meeting when a medical marijuana dispensary destined for lower Milpas Street barely survived being smothered in its crib by throngs of critics and three of Santa Barbara’s councilmembers. Given the public backlash, mainly from Eastside Latino families and church members, Schneider advised dispensary operator and Los Angeles transplant Ryan Howe to make community relations his top priority. “Not being seen as an ‘other’ is imperative,” she said.
More than one member of the council also remarked on the full-circle sensation generated by the hearing, as City Hall for the last decade has navigated — and at times stumbled — through the murky waters of medical marijuana laws. Howe’s club, to be called Canopy, will be one of the first to open in more than four years after Santa Barbara’s once flourishing storefront landscape withered under a series of federal crackdowns in the spring of 2012. Another new, fully permitted collective is set to open on upper State Street in coming months.
Tuesday marked the second appeal of Canopy after the Planning Commission upheld its prior approval last month. Led by neighbor Pete Dal Bello, whose family owns a home and two businesses near the 118 North Milpas Street storefront, the opposition voiced oft-heard refrains around medical marijuana dispensaries — that they eat up precious on-street parking, attract criminals to the neighborhood, and tempt curious kids passing by. Father Pedro Lopez of nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Church told the council he works hard to keep his congregation safe from corruption and crime. “This facility would compromise that greatly,” he stated.