North Jersey town says no to marijuana shop tied to RHONJ star

HALEDON — The Planning Board rejected a proposal for a new cannabis dispensary this week after multiple objectors, including public officials and a would-be competitor, laced into the application.

The Wayne-based business, owned by a limited liability company called This Budz 4 U, wanted to take over a Dunkin’ restaurant of 1,409 square feet at the intersection of Belmont and Haledon avenues.

Critics of the project pleaded with the board to think about how it would affect local youth. Among the opposition were the presidents of the Library Board of Trustees and the Manchester Regional Board of Education.

Raymond DeJonghe has owned a home on Church Street for four decades.

“Let’s get human here,” he said to the board Thursday night. “These are children that need encouragement — they need to be guided. And you’re going to put a dispensary where they walk home every day?”

LAW ENFORCEMENT: Acting on tip, Haledon police find ecstasy mill in home

The board voted 5-0 to deny the proposal, and its decision hinged on an interpretation of one key element in the municipal code.

The dispensary was proposed to be 501.4 feet from a day care center farther south on Haledon Avenue when measured from lot line to lot line — or 609.5 feet from door to door.

The board was told by representatives of the marijuana shop that either way, the business satisfied a 500-foot provision in the code. The rule states dispensaries must be at least that far from schools and the like.

But not everyone agreed with how the ordinance should be read.

Carl Rizzo, an attorney for Molly Ann Farms, a dispensary on Belmont Avenue, said the board should only consider the separation distance between the day care center and a Firestone auto care center, which is just east of the coffee shop.

Dunkin’ and the auto care center share a driveway and a parking lot, and the dispensary planned to maintain that arrangement.

The code does not specify if the separation distance should be from door to door, or from lot line to lot line — it only states that dispensaries cannot “operate” in the buffer.

In this case, Rizzo said, “operate” should be interpreted to mean the shared use of the Firestone lot since customers of the dispensary would need it to access the business.

“They can’t refute that,” Rizzo said.

The applicant’s measurement of the separation distance from door to door, and from lot line to lot line, was “arbitrary,” Rizzo said.

Story continues below map.

Daniel Lagana, an attorney for the dispensary, said in a closing statement that his client’s method of measuring the buffer was reasonable. “This is an eleventh-hour attempt to try to derail the project,” he said.

The business would have been known as The Dispensary. Two marijuana shops opened last month under the same name in the Somerset section of Franklin Township and in Union Township. Frank Catania, a recurring cast member of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” was a consultant for the Haledon project.

The application was presented almost variance-free. The only relief sought was for the dimension of the parking spots, though a traffic engineer testified that their size — 9 feet by 18 feet — was typical.

Lagana said the dispensary would be a less intense use than Dunkin’, which opens at 4 a.m. on weekdays. The marijuana shop would not open until 10 a.m., and he said it would not cause as much traffic because fewer people consume cannabis than drink coffee.

The attorney tried to get the board to imagine what else could end up at the same location, rattling off several permitted uses.

“Would a filling station be a better use for this site?” Lagana said, rhetorically. “Ask yourself that.”

The denial of the project came days after news broke that the Drug Enforcement Administration was prepared to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I substance to a much safer Schedule III substance, which can be lawfully prescribed as medication.

“The perception behind cannabis is changing,” Lagana said in his final remarks. It is going through a “paradigm shift,” he added.

Also this week, the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission announced more than $201 million in sales between January and March by 130 licensed dispensaries — reflecting year-over-year growth of 38%.

The agency noted that New Jerseyans bought more than $5.2 million worth of cannabis products on 4/20, an unofficial holiday for marijuana smokers.

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Haledon Planning Board denies application for weed shop with RHONJ tie