Lakewood staff present draft local cannabis rules; commission to hold public hearing Aug. 5

City planning staff on July 29 presented draft amendments that would replace Lakewood’s current citywide ban (LMC 18A4160) with a set of local operating standards and a city specialty license for cannabis retailers, producers, processors and independent testing laboratories. Assistant Director Angie Silva and associate planners Jay Hopkins and Billy Stewart told the Planning Commission the draft does not authorize operation — it would set local conditions under which a state-licensed business may operate in Lakewood.

Jay Hopkins said the proposal consolidates and relocates land-use tables and definitions, updates review and approval sections and defines which zones would permit each use. "Cannabis retail, we are proposing to place them in our commercial corridors — TOC, downtown, CBD, and C1–C3," Hopkins said, while processors and indoor producers are proposed primarily in industrial zones, with air-corridor AC1/AC2 locations subject to a type 3 conditional use review.

Staff emphasized the draft would mirror many state requirements while preserving local discretion on certain toggles. Silva reviewed likely retail allotments — an estimated four retail locations plus any social-equity allocations pending LCB confirmation — and said some buffer rules are non-reducible (elementary/secondary schools and public playgrounds retain 1,000-foot buffers) while others could be reduced locally to no less than 100 feet. "These are policy decisions for you: buffer reductions, hours caps, whether to allow researchers and how to treat the air corridor," Silva told commissioners.

The draft also ties local licensing to maintenance of an LCB state license: the city license would be site-specific, nontransferable, one-year term aligned with the LCB cycle, and nonrenewal or LCB suspension would trigger city revocation. Billy Stewart walked through operational standards: retail sales limited to people 21 and older, wholesale-only processing with extraction safety and building/fire approvals, enclosed indoor cultivation with best-available odor control (carbon filtration, negative pressure) and third-party accredited testing labs legally independent of producers/processors.

Commissioners asked technical and policy questions about labeling, enforcement, odor control, power and likely financial impacts. Staff repeatedly noted that no action was requested tonight; a public hearing on the draft is scheduled for Aug. 5, followed by deliberation and a possible recommendation to city council later in the fall.