Southfield City Council changes marijuana hours of operation

SOUTHFIELD — The Southfield City Council voted 4-3 Aug. 26 to amend its zoning laws to change the permitted hours of operation of marijuana businesses in the city.

The text amendment extended the hours of operation for medical marijuana provisioning centers and adult-use marijuana retailers 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturdays and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sundays to 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Sundays.

City Planner Terry Croad said at the meeting that the change “falls within the comparable range of hours of operation from all of our adjacent communities.”

Southfield is home to two recreational marijuana retailers, Lume Cannabis, at 26760 Lahser Road, and Dreams Canna, at 28930 Telegraph Road. A third marijuana retailer, Bloomery, will be located at 28610 Northwestern Highway. There is also a grow facility, NTK Investments, at 21680 W. Eight Mile Road. Croad added that the current provisioning centers that have been previously approved under special land use requests would have to come individually to request to extend their hours and that the City Council would review each request on an individual basis. Council members Yolanda Haynes, Nancy Banks and Charles Hicks voted no.

“When the petitioners initially sought the ability to provision, they chose their hours of operation,” Hicks said. “At that time, they could have sought later closure hours. I believe having earlier closure hours mitigates the risk of undesirable activity.”

Councilman Lloyd Crews voted in favor.

“At the crux of my decision and those that voted in favor was that Southfield has always been a friend to small businesses in our community. We want to see them thrive,” Crews said.

He said that, like the ordinance that allows gas stations to sell until 2 a.m., this ordinance is creating a convenience.

“So those of us that were for it felt that that’s all we were doing here, is providing a convenience for people who maybe get off at 5 o’clock and are headed home. If you’re closing at 6 already, it just really isn’t given much time to be able to stop in and get what it is that they desire to have, what Southfield has to offer. Our surrounding cities are much more lenient in that regard. We did look at the numbers in terms of the time frames and so forth. And I mean, we had everything from 6 o’clock to midnight from different areas. And so we said we just want our businesses to be competitive, and that is why the ‘yes’ votes came through.”

The public hearing for the amendment was held July 15, and one resident, Earl Crum, spoke out against the change in the ordinance.

“I am opposed to the changing of hours, those who are using marijuana, the facilities that are open later than the requested hours. If those individuals want to use marijuana, they should go to those facilities. What will they ask for next? Would they ask for a 24-hour operation? I’m totally opposed to the change of hours and any update to the changes.”

At the Aug. 26 meeting, representatives from Southfield’s marijuana retailers addressed the council on their reasons the ordinance change should be made.

“The biggest reason is that a lot of our customers do come to us on a weekend basis and are requesting this,” David Moyski, who runs the operations at Lume, said.

“This is Southfield residents that we know are spending this money in other municipalities. They’re going directly from our store. I’ve sat in our parking lot for a time of an hour or longer afterwards, just to greet those customers and see if it is even worth us staying open. And we have a lot of Southfield residents that are asking us to stay open. It’s not that they’re not consuming or purchasing these products. They’re just going and spending that money elsewhere. And we’d like to keep that money in Southfield, and we’d like to keep our customers very valued, as we do.”

Nadia Lutfy, one of the owners of Dreams Canna, echoed Moyski’s sentiment.

“Same. Our customers request that we stay open later. A lot of our customers work on Saturday, so it’s hard for them to get to us before 6 p.m. and it’s a service we can offer our customers. And as far as safety, it’s going to be safe. We’re at six more hours of the weekend that we have an armed security guard and staff in the store, so it’s safer when we’re open.”

John Abbo, an attorney for Lume Cannabis, added, “I simply just wanted to state that we’ve done this. We have several stores throughout the state of Michigan, 38 to be exact, in 37 of those municipalities, we have the ability to operate till 9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and we just feel that being at a disadvantage in Southfield hurts our business for those hours. We have the Berkley store down the street that we could send people to, but we prefer to keep that Southfield store doing the accurate numbers and serving the Southfield residents.”

Councilman Hicks asked the proprietors what the anticipated traffic between 6 p.m. and close would be.

Moyski answered. “So on a typical weekday, we see anywhere from 250 to 300 customers in transactions in those days during the weekend, where we typically would see busier traffic. We actually only see anywhere from around 200 to 225, so we anticipate that then we would see the equivalent amount of customers during that period of time, during the weekend, if not more. Most of our business does come in the later hours of the evening, just because that is when most people are off of work and able to come visit us.”

Lutfy added, “If I’m going to compare it to what we do on Thursday, Friday evenings, it’s probably about 100 customers, and those six to nine hours that come in about like $6,000 in revenue during those hours that we miss out on, on Saturdays and Sundays. And another good thing: It would create another shift of employees. So it would increase jobs for residents of Southfield to work, because we’d have two different shifts on Saturdays instead of just one.”

Paul Lutfy, the co-owner of Dreams Canna, said, “We actually put pylons out there so they don’t come on my driveway, so we don’t disappoint them. But yet, they’re driving off to other cities. And you know, like Nadia said, you don’t get busy till 6 o’clock, 5 o’clock on a Friday. It’s when they start coming in and it’s time they relax and want to go home and get their, whatever they want to get, their food, their marijuana, even in the liquor business, we don’t get busy till 7 o’clock at night on the weekends, especially on Saturdays.”