Three Coast Highway 101 locations and one El Camino Real location won the city’s lottery for a retail cannabis license.
As the hour-and-a-half-long lottery ended Friday morning, city planning manager Jennifer Gates said the next stage in the process will be a detailed city review of each of the four winning applications. Once that process is completed, new licenses will be issued to them.
The four proposed locations, listed in the order in which they were selected by lottery, are:
Encinitas began taking steps to allow retail cannabis in 2020 when city voters approved Measure H, which allowed four retail cannabis businesses, as well as cultivation, production and distribution businesses, subject to certain regulations and restrictions.
Applicants for retail licenses had until February 18 to submit their proposals to the city, and the city received about 200. Preference was given to applicants who had at least 12 months of experience as a cannabis business owner, 36 months as a pharmaceutical business owner and 18 months as an Encinitas business owner. 171 applicants who met the three criteria were placed in the highest tier of the lottery process, and all four business applicants were selected from that tier Friday morning.
The lottery, which was held in the City Council meeting room in City Hall, was not open to the public, but was streamed live on the city’s website. Most of the process seemed to go smoothly, but there was a hitch at the beginning, just before the first winning number was drawn.
“Since a ball has been dropped, I’m going to put all the balls back in the machine,” Gates, who ran the lottery, told the live audience.
Each of the 171 applications was represented by a red and white, numbered orb the size of a marble. Each ball was initially placed numbered up in metal trays. For each of the four drawings, a camera would move the trays of numbered balls to confirm to the live audience that the correct balls were in the trays, then the balls would be removed from the trays and dropped one by one into a see-through, metal mesh lottery spinning machine . As each ball entered the machine, Gates called out his number. The first reloading process with 171 balls took approximately six minutes from start to finish.
Restrictions on successful lottery winners – they had to be at least 1,000 feet from another contender – also meant that some unsuccessful contenders’ balls had to be eliminated after each draw.
The first lottery winner – 1038 S. Coast Highway – didn’t eliminate any other applications, except for the one the same company filed for the site next door. The other winner — the 1030 N. Coast Highway location in Leucadia — eliminated several locations on Leucadia Boulevard and Coast Highway. The third winner — the downtown 583 S Coast Highway site — eliminated three other sites on Coast Highway, two sites on Second Street and one on F Street. Because many of the sites had multiple retail applications and therefore had more numbered balls in lottery, any process of elimination might involve removing many balls.
In addition to not being allowed to locate near another cannabis business, the four retail operations must also be at least 1,000 feet away from “sensitive uses” such as schools, day care centers and playgrounds. They can operate from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and must have security cameras, alarms and 24-hour security, according to city regulations.
For information about the lottery and the business licensing process, visit the city’s website at: https://encinitasca.gov/Government/Departments/Development-Services/Planning-Division/Policy-Planning/Cannabis-Ordinance-Measure-H
