SALINE, MI – Saline officials will soon decide whether to explicitly allow marijuana dispensaries to offer sales from the comfort of customers’ vehicles.
The city doesn’t currently have a clear standard for curbside service at dispensaries, but Saline City Council now has the option to officially allow or prohibit the pickup option.
On Monday, March 4, city leaders voted to acknowledge new draft rules permitting curbside pickup, and a vote to pass or reject the measure is set for city council’s next meeting on March 18.
The option is currently off-limits for the majority, but not all, of the dispensaries that have received city approval or already opened in the city because of conditions placed on their site plans prohibiting curbside pickup until the city takes a stance one way or another on the service, according to city Community Development Director Ben Harrington.
The city’s first dispensary to open, Rush Cannabis on West Michigan Avenue, faces that restriction.
Currently, customers can place pickup orders but have to physically enter the store to have their IDs checked, pay for their orders and collect them, owner Shaun Mansour told Saline City Council on Monday, March 4.
With curbside service, that same process would happen in the parking lot, he said. A salesperson accompanied by store security would bring a mobile ID scanner and complete the transaction outside.
“No. 1 it’s just a convenience to the customer. Some people just don’t want to get out of their vehicle. You can imagine on a rainy day or a snowy day they don’t want to get out of their vehicle,” Mansour said. “And the other thing is for discreteness. Some people just don’t want to walk in the store and let everyone who’s in there know that they’ve walked in. Some people are in different professions and just want to keep that discrete.”
City planning staff hasn’t found many other cities that regulate curbside cannabis pickup, and all seem to allow it, Harrington said Monday. In Ann Arbor, city officials clarified city rules in 2022 to explicitly allow the curbside convenience, according to a memo from Harrington.
Saline’s planners interpret the current zoning code to permit curbside pickup in commercial districts, but given the restrictions accompanying site plans for many of the city’s dispensaries officials should clarify whether or not it is allowed for cannabis retailers, Harrington said.
The draft rules under consideration in Saline permitting curbside service would allow a maximum of five pickup spots per parking lot.
“There’s no evidence traffic-wise that it causes any specific issue or it causes parking issues to our knowledge,” Harrington said on Monday.
It’s essentially the same transaction as currently takes place within a dispensary, and Rush doesn’t anticipate any extra traffic if the curbside option is approved, Mansour added, in response to questions from city council members.
“If anything it will speed up the process of people leaving the site quicker. And from that standpoint I just don’t think it’s going to be any headache to the municipality, and if it was we would consider that as well. Obviously, we want to be great partners and continue to be great partners with the municipality,” he said.
Saline Mayor Brian Marl said Monday he anticipated Saline City Council would have a more substantive debate on the draft curbside pickup rules at the March 18 meeting when they came up for a vote.
City leaders would like to hear from the community on the issue, said Council Member Nicole Rice, while also noting that the city’s marijuana retailers have netted Saline roughly $118,000 in state marijuana tax revenue this year.
“I do want to stress that within the community I think we need to do everything possible to continue to support businesses,” Rice said.
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