NIPAWIN — Any cannabis store setting up shop in Nipawin will have to locate 50 metres away from youth-centred and recreational facilities.
Rennie Harper, Nipawin’s mayor, said all of council voted in favour of the town’s new cannabis bylaw at the Aug. 13 meeting because having a distance that’s close to a size of a town block seemed to be the right thing to do in Nipawin’s circumstances. The shops also must be located in a downtown commercial zone.
“Cannabis is legal. We do want to have a buffer,” she said. “We don’t want to make it so large that future businesses don’t have a place to be in our downtown area.”
“You have to remember, that restrictive zone is a two-way street,” added Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator. “Once the restrictive zone is set in a location, if there’s any daycares or youth facilities that want to come downtown, they would be restricted from being within that same distance from the cannabis stores.”
The 50-metre buffer zone surrounds preschools, daycares, public and private schools, parks and playgrounds, public recreation uses, community centres, and commercial recreation uses.
A concern that council had discussed – along with many others – was the possibility of a cannabis store being within the line of sight of a youth-centred facility.
“Really, that’s a bit of a red herring,” Elliott said. “The cannabis stores are so tightly regimented in terms of what they can display and how visible they can be in terms of the product.”
Harper said council had decided the federal and provincial regulations would be enough to allay any concerns.
Central Park
A small move made to correct a development requirement is helping protect Central Park from development.
Provincial legislation requires that 10 per cent of lands developed are put into a municipal reserve to ensure there’s a supply of park space in the future. The town planner discovered that two developments in the past didn’t have lands placed into municipal reserve.
“This was a good opportunity to take a portion of Central Park and identify it as such to meet the requirement and get those other two developments off the books,” Elliott said.
The administrator said if more developments are found that don’t have land assigned to the municipal reserve, they’ll add more land from Central Park.
Harper said council aims to protect Central Park from development. While there could be a plan to further protect the park in the future, she said it made sense to apply park lands to the municipal reserve in the meantime so provincial regulations are properly followed.
