Anchorage approves a Muldoon Road marijuana store, over a dispute about how close it sits to a playground

The Anchorage Assembly approved a marijuana store on Muldoon Road on Tuesday, 8-3, over objections that the city measured the playground buffer wrong and that a stricter state buffer should apply. The store, Sensimilla, must still pass city inspections before it can open at 1431 Muldoon Road.

The dispute is over distance. Assembly member Yarrow Silvers said city code requires measuring 500 feet to the edge of a playground — including any abutting parking lots — and that the site falls short. The planning department disagreed: current planning manager Elizabeth Appleby said the site is compliant at 690 feet by walking route, and that the city measures from playground equipment, not parking lots.

A second question is unresolved. Cook Inlet Tribal Council argued that its nearby youth-program facility counts as a "recreation or youth center," which would trigger a separate 500-foot state buffer — a question of whether the city or the state's marijuana office should decide. Tuesday's vote did not settle it.

The area's community council opposed the store. "I walked that area," council president Pamela Rager said. "You have public housing straight across the street, a complex, not a building, a full complex. You have a playground right next door. You have a health clinic right there."