Last year, the Centralia City Council lifted the city’s moratorium on recreational marijuana businesses and narrowly approved zoning it into the city’s industrial areas.
Now, one of the foremost lobbyists for marijuana has come before the city council in hopes the city will dial back its restrictions to those approved by the state.
Ezra Eickmeyer addressed the city council during its regular meeting on Tuesday, asking them to “open up a dialogue” and allow him to present his case as to why the city should allow recreational marijuana stores to operate in the locations originally approved by the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board.
Centralia renewed a moratorium on pot several times after the voters approved legalization through Initiative 502. The city was heavily pressured by several businesses that sought to open marijuana operations in the city and eventually found itself as the subject of a lawsuit brought by one of the only two most qualified potential marijuana retailers, Perry Nelson.
In July 2014, the city council approved zoning for pot, but only in the city’s industrial areas — a much more restrictive standard than that allowed under state law.
Now, Eickmeyer is working on behalf of Richard Watkins, the second qualifying business under the state regulations. The state initially approved locations in the 1600 block of Gold Street and the 1500 block of Kresky for Nelson and Watkins, respectively.
The areas approved by Centralia have not proved commercially viable to develop and thus the industry hasn’t come to town.
David Kois, the man who fought with the city for close to two years to lift the restrictions so he could build a 40,000-square-foot production and processing facility on an 8-acre property next to Greenwood Memorial Park in the 1900 block of Johnson Road, said he likely isn’t going to move his operation to Centralia after all.
The land Kois sought was what he said is the most developable in terms of affordability.
“Currently I’m stalled because of issues with my partners,” he said. “I’m most likely going to be starting my operations elsewhere. ... Not that I don’t want to get running in Centralia, it’s just with the partners I have I don’t think it’s the wisest move.”
Kois cited inflated construction costs, which he says went from $2.5 million to close to $4 million for the building, as the main reason he’s looking elsewhere.
Kois said he and his business partners have sold the 0.75 acre lot, where the home of the Greenwood Memorial Park sexton John Baker once stood, to Nelson and his business partners so they can continue to build a retail marijuana location.
However, a recent examination of tax parcels in Lewis County showed Stan Shkuratoff, Kois’ partner, to still be the owner of the lot.
Nelson did not return calls for comment.
Eickmeyer is an experienced lobbyist who has represented business interests ranging from commercial fishermen to acupuncturists. He was on the ground level of pushing a bill to regulate medical marijuana through the state Legislature in 2011, only to see most of it vetoed by then Gov. Chris Gregoire shortly after it was passed. Now he’s working to represent the marijuana industry to relax restrictions at the local level.
“My goal is to minimize the presence of retail stores in the community while ensuring the stores have enough presence to effectively compete with illicit market,” he said.
He argues that in the nearly 100 cities that have some sort of restriction, ban or moratorium on marijuana, people are still using pot, but they’re just buying it from drug dealers who don’t have the safety or age of their customers in mind, nor are they paying any taxes to the state.
During the last session, legislators shifted the lion’s share of pot tax revenue away from funding health care and substance-abuse prevention and education to schools, to the tune of $1 billion over the next two bienniums.
“If that money doesn’t materialize we’ll have a giant hole in the education budget,” Eickmeyer said.
Working with Centralia is only one of Eickmeyer’s efforts in working with local governments. He estimates he’ll try to work with six other municipalities on marijuana. But he said the Watkins store is “pretty much built out” on Kresky and could open within weeks if the city would not block them.
A common argument among many cities that have restrictions on pot is the fear of shifting political winds and the federal government coming down hard on the counties and cities that allow it. Eickmeyer said there’s no precedent going all the way back to the Civil War to support that theory, and he points out that medical marijuana has existed through both the Bush and Obama administrations.
“No one has threatened to arrest local officials. If something is legal and you’re enacting it, but it conflicts with federal law; there is no history of federal government arresting local officials for conducting their business,” he said.
