After residents on Park Ridge’s south side complained that the city approved locating two cannabis dispensaries in their area but none elsewhere, officials are now considering whether to authorize a dispensary location in the city’s Uptown business district.
Only one dispensary has opened in the city.
When the Park Ridge City Council approved cannabis dispensaries in the city in 2021, it did so under a couple of stipulations, including prohibiting those stores from being located in Uptown. As the city council debates where dispensaries could locate, as well as possibly extending buffer distances between dispensaries longer than those mandated by the state, several City Council members expressed that there might be interest in reversing that ban, and delegated the topic to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. The commission voted unanimously to approve the reversal recently.
The Planning and Zoning Commission, made up of nine volunteer residents appointed by the council to give advice on zoning recommendations, had previously approved cannabis dispensaries to operate anywhere in the city, Commissioner James Hanlon said. “Now the City Council is putting it back in our laps to say… ‘What do you feel about that now?’” he said.
Hanlon said the City Council received feedback from residents who