AURORA | Six months after pot shops started opening around the city, Aurora’s marijuana enforcement division is looking into changing some of its restrictions surrounding where some types of marijuana businesses can open.
“Right now, we say that manufacturing infused products need to be in the industrial area, but we’re looking at maybe they could be in a commercial area,” city pot division manager Robin Peterson told city council members at an Amendment 64 Ad Hoc committee meeting Monday.
Under Aurora’s rules, only retail marijuana stores are allowed in commercial areas. Grow, manufacturing and testing facilities have to be located in industrial areas.
Interim Deputy City Manager Jason Batchelor, who is part of the marijuana enforcement division, said the city would ensure that the revised regulations would only allow infused product manufacturers to locate in commercial areas and not businesses that deal with extraction.
He said the two processes fall under the same manufacturing license as regulated by the state, though they are very different. Unlike marijuana infused product manufacturing where marijuana is simply put into a product via baking or other means, extraction can involve more dangerous processes. Hash oil production, a type of extraction, has caused several fires in the city according to Aurora fire officials. Batchelor said under the revised ordinance, those businesses would remain in industrial parts of the city.
Batchelor said the enforcement division is also looking into allowing marijuana testing facilities in commercial areas, but that the provision could prove difficult because of the equipment testing labs are now using to measure potency as well as contaminants in pot edibles and flower, a requirement under state law.
“The state has increased its (testing) requirements so now what you’re seeing with testing, you’re getting a lot of pressurized cylinders. It’s not just a guy with a suitcase anymore. It’s a little bit more intense,” he said.
Councilwoman Molly Markert, a member of the committee, asked whether the city could hold off on drafting its own legislation on zoning until the state comes up with rules. City staff replied the state’s marijuana enforcement division is not contemplating any rules surrounding where testing facilities should be located anytime soon.
Batchelor said the city could opt to only allow testing facilities in strictly commercial areas but not in mixed-use or transit-oriented development areas.
“You can always allow that in the future, but once we allow it, it’s tougher to pull back,” he said.