The Planning Board paved the way for a former fast food restaurant to become the city’s first retail cannabis dispensary – including a drive-through for pickup only.

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The board unanimously (7-0) approved an application for a minor site plan and conditional use after about 2½ hours of testimony and questions at its June 27 meeting.

Plantabis Dispensary, LLC would operate at 2077 Route 1 (Block 389, Lots 22, 22.01, and 23.01). The three parcels that make up the retail space, which formerly housed a seafood restaurant and before that a White Castle, sold for $1.8 million in January, by Avenel-based Rahway Plaza, LLC, to Barbera Realty III, LLC of Murray Hill according to property records.

Plantabis received conditional license approval from the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission (CRC) on Sept. 12 (Applicant ID 1759) and filed a local license with Rahway on Dec. 6, according to Richard Wells of Archer and Greiner, an attorney representing Plantabis. City Council approved a resolution in February supporting Plantabis’s application for a Class 5 Retail License to operate in the city. City ordinances allow for two licenses in each of the five types of facilities created by the state: retail, cultivation, manufacturing, delivery, wholesale, and retail.

Conditions included replacing an existing 6-foot fence with an 8-foot fence, not only for the rear of the property as originally proposed, but also along the southern portion of the property, as well as refurbish and replant all the buffer greenery and repave the parking lot. The applicant also would create an operations policy for traffic that could be shared with city’s professional staff and be amended as needed.

Conditional uses require a site plan be submitted to the Planning Board and applicants must prove they’ve met all conditional use plans, otherwise, they’d be at the Zoning Board for use variance, Board Attorney Karl Kemm said. In addition to the conditional use, the applicant required a variance for an 8-foot fence along the rear of the property where a 6-foot fence is required. Among the 11 conditions are things like not being within 200 feet of another cannabis facility and filing a security plan with the Police Department,

Courtney Pascucci, co-founder and CEO, and Crystal Marko, operations consultant, testified on behalf of Plantabis. The drive-through, which would be limited to pick-up only, could accommodate up to eight cars. The first window will be used to check IDs and the second window would be where customers would be allowed to pick up their orders.

Eight point-of-sale systems could process upward of 80 transactions per hour, between walk-in and pre-order customers. In their experience, Marko and Pascucci estimated about 60 percent of customers pre-order and about 40 percent walk in, which averages out over time. Cannabis waste is handled by distributors and taken off site, not disposed of in regular trash. No usable product is disposed of on site. All product is delivered pre-packaged and sealed and stored in a vault on site, with only dummy displays, Marko said. An air filtration system, similar to those used in hotels, would be used and no aroma would be noticeable in the surrounding neighborhood.

“Operation of this facility as a dispensary would operate equal to or better than when it was a fast food restaurant,” Lee D. Klein of Klein Traffic Consulting testified. A cannabis dispensary would generate less traffic, about 32 trips in weekday morning peak hour, than the 1,900 square-foot fast food restaurant, which he estimated would generate 85 trips in morning peak hours – a difference of 53. The weekday afternoon peak of 4 to 6 p.m. would generate 63 trips per hour as a fast food eatery and 47 per hour as a cannabis facility, about 16 less. On Saturdays, the difference would be about 50 – 105 per hour for a fast food restaurant compared with 55 per hour. Klein expected “no detriment” to traffic on East Scott Avenue, and about half what traffic would be as a restaurant.

Maurice Rached of Colliers Engineering presented a separate traffic report on behalf of the city. Dispensaries are new and most traffic information and data comes from Colorado, where they started, Rached said. “We don’t have enough experience in New Jersey with these facilities, we don’t know whether it will generate 30 , 40 or 50 trips,” he said.

The applicant’s traffic expert presented credible testimony but  there is variability in parking and traffic standards, Rached  said. He recommended that as a condition of the application makes a policy and operational manual to specifically deal with traffic flow. That way, they can review and ensure they have the right elements to properly manage demands of the facility, he said. Wells, the applicant’s attorney, said they would have no problems doing that, within reason.

Sarah Chabak of East Scott Avenue lives directly adjacent to the proposed site and was the only member of the public to speak during the public hearing. She requested that the 8-foot fence be extended beyond one side of the property to screen her property as well and also suggested upgrading the greenery on site. Her biggest concern, however, was traffic as the two previous fast food restaurants did not see the amount of traffic cited in the traffic studies.

Since the White Castle closed, there’s been an uptick in traffic on East Scott Avenue, according to Chabak, and questioned how the board could control traffic backing up onto Route 1 and East Scott Avenue.

After some discussion and suggestions about limiting which way motorists can turn, Wells said off-site traffic is out of their purview and their operations policy would address the variability and maintain efficiency as much as they can.

“I was not going to support this, I didn’t like the drive through,” Commissioner Chris Brown said before voting. “You did a really good job presenting this. We shouldn’t be restricting business from growing and doing well.”

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