Adams Approves Zoning Variance for Weed Cultivation and Retail Facility
Last night the Adams Zoning Board of Appeals voted to grant a variance to New Train LLC, a company petitioning Adams to grow and sell cannabis in an Industrial Park zone. The property in question is on Renfrew Street on the former site of Burke Construction, according to a post in The Berkshire Eagle.
The variance application passed despite opposition to the cannabis facility by an attorney representing an abutter to the property. The variance was needed to allow the property in the Industrial Park zone to be used for cannabis cultivation. The next process is for the approved variance to go through an appeal process, just one of a number of other hurdles before the grow and sell facility is stamped approved.
The Wyoming Legislature has been abuzz this week with a number of high-profile bills â and topics â filtering through the House and Senate. Some would directly impact Teton County, and others have animated conversation around Medicaid expansion, abortion rights, taxes, power generation and voting.
Weâve rounded up a few of the bills here.
House Bill 164, co-sponsored by Teton County Rep. Andy Schwartz and Sen. Mike Gierau, passed the committee on Monday in a 5-2 vote.
The legislation authorizes Wyoming to sell a square-mile Grand Teton National Park inholding to the National Park Service, though itâs saddled with a potential poison pill of an amendment that requires any sale must fetch $500,000 an acre.
PERSPECTIVE-On Tuesday, March 2, SPUR hosted an hourlong online conversation with Assembly members Phil Ting and David Chiu (above right) and State Senator Scott Wiener (above left).
(Link to tape here.) My state senator, Nancy Skinner, was also on the program; but as is so often her wont on such occasions, she didn’t show up. The legislators covered a lot of territory: COVID, the state budget, homelessness, the Newsom recall, and housing. Most of the talk was unremarkable. It was only when they got to housing that the knives came out.
Scott Wiener and David Chiu at SF City Hall
The Pitfalls of the 15-Minute City
The concept, touted as hyper-local, can fail to take into account local conditions and historical inequities in American cities. March 8, 2021, 11am PST | Diana Ionescu |
The concept of the 15-minute city has been adopted as an aspirational buzzword by city leaders across the United States, but there are dangers of applying a model conceived in Europe to many North American cities, writes Feargus O Sullivan for Bloomberg CityLab. Urban designer Jay Pitter calls transplanting the idea potentially presumptive and colonial, arguing that it doesn t take into account the histories of urban inequity, intentionally imposed by technocratic and colonial planning approaches, such as segregated neighborhoods, deep amenity inequity and discriminatory policing of our public spaces that are deeply embedded in American cities.
Home-Based Businesses Could Save the Post-Pandemic Economy
Seattle s city council considers reducing arbitrary and exclusionary limits on home-based businesses. March 8, 2021, 10am PST | Diana Ionescu |
In California, the humble garage-based business has been elevated to the level of myth by the Silicon Valley giants who tout their early, heady startup days working out of their home garages. With the pandemic causing tectonic shifts in how and where we work, writes Ray Dubicki in The Urbanist, garage businesses provide one more lifeline for struggling entrepreneurs and small businesses. Yet in some cities, outdated zoning codes prevent many businesses from being legally conducted in homes. In Seattle, zoning code excludes all sorts of uses throughout the 75% of the city that’s strictly zoned for single-family detached homes. The concept of home occupations, activists argue, is outdated and harmful to both small businesses and the vibrancy of neighborhoods.