Resolutions adopting negative declaration notice of determination of non-significance for two prospective cannabis dispensaries were approved by near-unanimous votes of the Ulster Town Board last week. And if you don’t understand what any of that means, you’re not alone.
“What that means, and only lawyers could come up with this, is that if you give a positive declaration, that means that your project will have a significant impact on the environment,” said Michael Moriello, an attorney representing both Sage Cannabis and The Joint, two cannabis dispensaries inching closer to fruition. “If you get a negative declaration of environmental significance, it means that your project will not have a significant effect on the environment.”
The lone holdout on both resolutions was deputy supervisor Clayton Van Kleeck, who sought further clarification about the extent a cannabis dispensary might present a negative impact.
“You’re going to think I’m being humorous, but I mean this question with all sincerity,” Van Kleeck said during the discussion at the Thursday, August 15 meeting. “In saying that this has a no negative impact, would I be wrong if I wondered if people walking around high on drugs is a negative impact to my community?”
Moriello said because the town will only consider dispensaries and not lounges where cannabis can be consumed, that was less likely.
In December 2022, the Ulster Town Board voted unanimously to allow cannabis retail operations in the municipality, but opt out of on-site consumption lounges. In voting to allow retail businesses, council-members amended municipal zoning codes to keep them within highway commercial (HC) and regional commercial (RC) districts. Also included in the local law is a framework for acceptable opening hours for cannabis retail, which will only be allowed to open between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
The law also restricts cannabis dispensaries from operating within 1,500 feet of one another, and prohibits dispensaries from being located within 500 feet front door to front door of any residential building. According to building inspector Warren Tutt, both Sage Cannabis and The Joint, meet these distance criteria.
“I’ve been involved with several other people that were interested in doing a project in Ulster, and it was made crystal clear to me that those projects were not going to happen if there was a lounge,” Moriello said. “You can have a retail sale of cannabis, which is what this is; you buy it and you leave the premises after you buy it. There are (communities) where they allow to have a lounge, kind of like a cigar lounge, where people get high and then do whatever they’re doing. But that is not what’s going to happen here.”
Van Kleeck equated the dispensary to a pharmacy but still expressed concern about what happens next.
“You go in one person at a time, you get your stuff, you leave, you go home, you consume it, and now you’re high,” he said.
Moriello drew a different comparison.
“My analogy is that it’s the modern-day liquor store,” he said. “People do the same thing with alcohol.”
Moriello added that one area considered is whether a cannabis dispensary would have a negative impact on the character of a neighborhood in which it would be located. He felt they would not.
“In these places, in my opinion, they’re becoming so ubiquitous,” Moriello said.
Van Kleeck agreed.
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” he said. “You wouldn’t know they were there.”
Van Kleeck shared similar misgivings about cannabis consumption lounges during a town board meeting held in late-November 2022.
“We’re standing at the bottom of a waterfall trying to regulate the water but we can’t,” he said. “We can only regulate what’s happening around us. We’re trying to figure out whether something like a lounge is known to be harmful to a community…or whether it’s better to have a spot where it’s consumed.”
The Town of Ulster is unlikely to allow cannabis consumption lounges in the immediate future, voting to opt out in December 2022 gave them the flexibility to one day accept them. According to the New York State Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, opting in would be irreversible.
Both Sage Cannabis and The Joint would move into existing structures in the municipality, one a pair of geodesic domes, the other the corner of a retail and restaurant hub.
Jennifer Dundas, principal of Hillsdale-based Sage Holdco, Inc., has submitted an application for a dispensary called Sage Cannabis, to be located at 268 Forest Hill Drive in Kingston, in a pair of domes in Ulster’s municipal highway commercial district. The futuristic domes on the property comprise 3,265-square-feet, the 1,590-square-feet in the east dome earmarked for retail space. The west dome is planned for storage and office space and would not be open to customers, with its employee entrance planned for the rear of the building. The property can be seen from Route 28 and sits just west of Potter Brothers Ski and Snowboard Shop and the New York State Thruway.
Plans for Sage Cannabis include a total of 26 customer parking spaces, including two ADA spaces that are nine feet wide.
The Joint has been proposed for 1221 Ulster Avenue in a plaza along Route 9W that currently includes Chipotle Mexican Grill and Beer World, which sells both beer and tobacco products. The Joint would occupy 3,198-square-feet of space on the northern end of the existing 82,328-square-foot building, which would be achieved by separating Beer World into two separate retail spaces. The Joint’s space would include a public display area, as well as private office space, staff training and break areas, and a DEA cage area.
The application for The Joint came from business owner Saumik Patel, owner of Rock Hill-based Saumik Kingston, LLC, which has already been granted a cannabis retail license by the state.
Both projects are subject to further review by the town and will require approval of both a special use permit and final plan approval before they can open.
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