Alaska Life Hack: Where are all the pot shops located in Anchorage?

THIS MUNI MAP CAN HELP YOU LOCATE NEARBY HERBERY

Anchorage is thriving, if pot shops are any measurement. Since legalization of commercial cannabis sales, cultivation, and manufacturing, it seems like the only businesses opening up these days are pot shops.

In fact, there is one cannabis license for every 5,000 residents in the municipality, but the vast majority of the blooming businesses are located in a rectangle along the central corridor, from 4th Avenue downtown south to O’Malley, with Minnesota on the west and New Seward Highway as the eastern boundary.

The Municipality of Anchorage has published a map showing where all the commercial cannabis establishments are, a map that shows how far they need to be to be legal distance from controlled zones, such as schools and day care centers.

The map allows the user to explore the current licensees and land use special permit applications. One need just click on one of the color-coded points on the map to learn more about the license. And you can zoom in to get a good sense of the nearby commercial features of the neighborhood.

For instance, all marijuana establishments must be 500 feet from a primary or secondary school. Those licenses in existence before January, 2017 are grandfathered at their locations, even if they are closer than the municipal law currently allows.

The Anchorage pot purveyor map can be found at this link.

There are 71 marijuana stores, cultivation facilities, and manufacturing operations operating in the Anchorage bowl, with two more in the approval process with the Assembly and eight queued up at the Marijuana Control Board.

You can learn more about two of those applications with the municipality of Anchorage — one in Jewel Lake and one in Girdwood — at this link.

The Assembly’s Community and Economic Development Committee will consider those two applications on Thursday, June 13  at 9 am in the Development Services Conference Room #170, 4700 Elmore Road Anchorage.

To learn about completed applications of new marijuana businesses that are now growing like weeds around the state, and to see the associated deadlines for posting comments on the proposed locations, visit this state link.