Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The commission\u2019s draft rules, which will dictate where marijuana producers and retailers can operate starting late next year, offer the most flexibility downtown. The commission will revisit the rules at its next meeting.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the city, a dispensary would be prohibited from operating within 1,500 feet of another pot shop, and within 500 feet of any school, community or recreation center, or house of worship.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n During a public hearing last week, Hartford planning director Aimee Chambers asked the commission to consider eliminating those distance requirements in certain areas outside of the downtown, too.<\/p>\n \u201cBetween the distance requirements, it would make it much easier for retail locations to locate in downtown than anywhere else in the city,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cIn order to allow a diversification of locations for retailers, having additional zones may be the better option.\u201d<\/p>\n No one else spoke in favor or against recreational marijuana sales \u2014 or where they would be located \u2014 during the Nov. 23 public hearing.<\/p>\n The first licensed retailers will start selling recreational marijuana toward the end of 2022. The state law legalizing recreational marijuana allows for a 3% local tax on marijuana sales along with a state tax of more than 6%.<\/p>\n In Hartford, the planning and zoning commission proposes allowing retailers downtown, in Main Street districts \u2014 which are located along the city\u2019s major corridors \u2014 and in certain commercial-industrial areas, like the properties around the U-Haul Moving and Storage on Capitol Avenue.<\/p>\n Recreational retailers would also be allowed to open in certain mixed-use areas near historic neighborhoods, which are mostly zoned along Asylum, Farmington and Wethersfield avenues and Washington Street.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, dispensaries that are only selling medical marijuana could also operate in the lower-density, mixed-use areas surrounding hospitals and other campus-like facilities. One such district covers the properties along Woodland Street between St. Francis Hospital and Farmington Avenue.<\/p>\n The commission did not propose any specific locations for cannabis-related businesses.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hartford is already home to one medical marijuana dispensary, Curaleaf, which received special permission to open in the industrial North Meadows.<\/p>\n Daily<\/p>\n Catch up on the day\u2019s top headlines sent directly to your inbox weekdays at 3 p.m<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n New dispensaries would not be allowed to open in the North or South Meadows under the proposed changes to Hartford\u2019s zoning regulations.<\/p>\n All dispensaries would be allowed to be open between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n The planning and zoning commission plans to restrict marijuana cultivators and manufacturers to industrial and commercial-industrial districts, though a micro-cultivator \u2014 someone with 2,000-10,000 square feet of grow space \u2014 would have more flexibility; they could operate in a multi-use district or in areas zoned as Main Street 3.<\/p>\n These areas, typically in car-oriented commercial centers, are limited in number. The Stop & Shop on New Park Avenue is located in one. So is the city-owned empty lot at Albany Avenue and Woodland Street, an intersection shared with the Artists Collective and a branch of the Hartford Public Library.<\/p>\n Several communities, including Avon, Enfield, Greenwich, Newtown and Prospect, have already prohibited recreational marijuana businesses in their town limits.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Others, like New Britain and Bristol, are planning to adapt their existing rules for medical marijuana dispensaries.<\/p>\n Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hartford \u2014 As several Connecticut towns move to ban marijuana sales, members of Hartford\u2019s planning and zoning commission have a different goal: encouraging people to open cannabis-related businesses in the city while keeping retail sales out of residential neighborhoods. Advertisement The commission\u2019s draft rules, which will dictate where marijuana producers and retailers can operate starting late next year, offer the most flexibility downtown. The commission will revisit the rules at its next meeting. Elsewhere in the city, a dispensary would be prohibited from operating within 1,500 feet of another pot shop, and within 500 feet of any school, community or… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/hartford-marijuana-plans-would-encourage-cannabis-related-businesses-downtown-hartford-courant.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"News](\"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/hartford-marijuana-plans-would-encourage-cannabis-related-businesses-downtown-hartford-courant.jpg\")
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