By Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


The Pinckney Village Council has approved some special use requests that are needed for a proposed marijuana establishment.

Council approved three special land use requests from applicant Chris Bonk for a proposed project called “The Means” at 935 West Main Street/M-36. It’s the old, vacant Pinckney Elementary School property, which is pictured. He’s seeking a grower class c license, processor license, and retailer license.

It will be a competitive process as to how the licenses are granted in the Village but all applicants first need to secure special land use permits.

Village President Rebecca Foster reported that the Cannabis Committee met and came up with a special meeting schedule to accommodate any last-minute applications within the current application window but no one submitted anything. She told Council a fall application schedule was also established for any available licenses because they’ve had no applications for micro-businesses.

Foster said they came up with a new application window and made some adjustments, noting the Committee didn’t think the window needed to be as big or long as the one they just went through. She says the proposal is to use the new application window for subsequent years and have it in the fall. Foster said the other suggestion was to amend the current 90-day review period to state that approvals would be announced upon completion of a review but no later than September 30th. She added they set up the original schedule thinking they were going to get flooded with applications but that didn’t happen.

Council approved a motion to approve the new schedule and to amend the 90-day review period for the current application period.

Meanwhile, the Planning Commission and Village planner had previously recommended approval of Bonk’s requests, as well as requests from two other applicants. Those include Ann Arbor-based QPS Michigan Holdings for C3 Provisioning that wants to renovate the old vacant fire hall at 1066 East M-36 for a retail business. The other is Lume Pinckney, which wants to open a retailer facility at 1201 East Main Street, where ATI Physical Therapy is currently located.

Council will consider those two additional special-use applications at the June 28th meeting.

Foster told WHMI after that, the application period closes on June 30th so all applicants who had their “Part A” application (special use permit) approved have to submit the rest of their application materials (Part B) by that date. Then the Village will review the applications and award licenses on or before September 30th.

Foster says the Village has added a second micro-business license as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by Jobs for Pinckney. That means the Village has 1 grower license (any class), 1 retailer, 2 microbusinesses, 1 processor, 1 transporter, and 1 compliance facility.