The Vanguard noted in yesterday’s article that city staff heavily weighed opposition from neighbors against applications for dispensaries. One group is pushing back, with Rob Read of F Street Dispensary sending a letter to city staff and the Planning Commission with an attachment containing 58 letters of support from property owners, residents, and businesses around their F Street location.
Too numerous to print on their own – and many of them signed form letters, we have included the attachment at the bottom.
Dear Planning Commissioners,
After reviewing the recent staff report on cannabis dispensary CUP applications, it is clear that the City staff weighted heavily the three letters of opposition against our F Street Dispensary application. This effectively dropped our application to Tier 2. We respectfully disagree with being placed in this tier. I have attached with this email 58 letters of support from property owners, residents, and businesses around our F Street location. Letters are also written from Davis community members who are 100% in support of our operational plans and dispensary location.
Additionally, in the staff report, attributes for each application and site were listed. In some cases, attributes listed for the applicant(s) located closest to our location were not included in our own list of attributes. We believe certain attributes in the staff report apply equally to our F Street location they do with other downtown applicants. This is due to the shared land-use type, customer 
base, and close proximity we are to one another.
Applicable Attributes:
No impacts on residential uses – As with other downtown applicants, F Street Dispensary will not have an impact on residential uses. Additionally, F Street Dispensary has an endorsement letter from the nearest stand-alone residential home located at 619 4th St.
Parking – None required in C-C district. Public parking garages located nearby; served by bus lines; many people bike and walk to this area of downtown. The description matches 416 F Street’s location. F Street Dispensary is located a short walk from public parking areas on the corner of 4th and G Street and on F Street between 3rd and 4th Streets. There is a bus stop that makes 240 stops per week less than 75 feet from the property.
On-Site Handicapped Parking* – F Street Dispensary has a downtown handicapped parking space in front of the building. *new attribute
Located in retail with offices area of the downtown C-C district, uses are office, residential, retail, personal and business services. The uses on F Street between 4th Street and 5th Street include retail from a phone store, personal services from a massage and body waxing company, and residential units are present. Office use and multiple business services also on the street. The McCormick Building, located next door to the south, was a large-scale project originally designed, approved, and built to be all retail, with a restaurant on the first floor facing 4th and F Streets.
The use may bring new customers to the area to shop and dine depending on the shopping habits of the customer and their mode of transit. F Street Dispensary’s customers will frequent other businesses in the downtown area just as customers at other proposed dispensary customers are assumed to do.
We recommend, when looking at the F Street Dispensary proposal, that the Planning Commission consider the high degree of neighborhood and community support in Davis. When suitably adding the positive land-use related attributes listed above, F Street Dispensary demonstrates competitiveness equal to or exceeding Tier 2 applicants. Therefore, we request the Commission to include F Street Dispensary along with All Good Wellness and Good People’s Farm when providing feedback requested by the City of Davis staff on the merits of downtown dispensaries.
Thank you for considering our request and taking our input into consideration.
Endorsement Letters F Street Dispensary
Rob Read
I cannot help but find it ironic that small numbers of letters against a business proposal are being considered enough to assign a business to a lower tier in the case of a dispensary, but an entire neighborhood association with no neighborhood disagreement, asking for modification of a project was not felt significant in the case of Trackside.