A Muldoon pot shop passed city rules, but a tribal youth program cites stricter state rules

A retail marijuana store proposed for Muldoon Road has cleared Anchorage's separation rules, with the city's Planning Department recommending approval. But Cook Inlet Tribal Council says the store should be blocked under a different, stricter standard — the state's — because a youth program sits nearby, and the objection has exposed a gap between the two sets of rules that no one in the record has resolved.

The Assembly opened a hearing on the store's permit Aug. 4, didn't finish, and takes it up again Tuesday. What it votes on is only the municipal license; a separate state question sits behind it.

The mismatch is the heart of it. Anchorage's code requires marijuana stores to sit at least 500 feet from seventeen named uses — schools, playgrounds, child care centers and the like. A "recreation or youth center" is not on that list. State law has exactly that category, and bars a new marijuana license within 500 feet of one. So a store can pass the city's test and still fail the state's — and the tribal council says that's what's happening here. It contends its building, which houses the Denelchin Lab, is a youth center within 500 feet of the site.

The city's own compliance checklist marks the store as meeting municipal rules, and its only explanation concerns playgrounds. It does not mention the tribal council, its building, or the state's youth-center category at all.

Adding to the confusion is that no one has established the distance. The tribal council's own website lists the Denelchin Lab's address as 7710 Grass Creek Road — roughly 1,260 feet from the store site in a straight line, and the shortest walking route the state requires would be longer, not shorter. The store's own application puts its nearest protected site at about 734 feet and does not list the council's building among the concerns. Yet the council received a hearing notice at all only because the Planning Department mailed notices to everyone within 500 feet. Both facts sit in the record, unreconciled.

There's also an unanswered question of who is even supposed to rule on the objection. The 500-foot youth-center rule is state law, enforced by the Marijuana Control Board, not the Assembly. When the tribal council's legal officer raised the concern in March, he asked plainly whether he was writing to the right office — the municipal clerk, or the state. The reply, in the file, never answered him. If the Assembly approves the permit Tuesday, it directs the clerk to tell the state that Anchorage's protest is lifted — handing the youth-center question along to the state board, still unresolved.