Nobody has measured the 500-foot buffer at a Muldoon marijuana store, and the Assembly takes it up Tuesday

Anchorage's administration and Planning Department have recommended approval for applicant Baltazar Holdings, LLC, doing business as Sensimilla, a retail marijuana store proposed for 1431 Muldoon Road. Sitting in the same file is an objection. Cook Inlet Tribal Council contends a proposed marijuana store on Muldoon Road could be blocked because a youth program building sits within 500 feet of the site. The record before the Assembly does not include an official measurement or an agency determination resolving the objection.

The Anchorage Assembly opened a public hearing on the store's permit Aug. 4. It did not finish: the hearing was carried over, and Resolution AR 2026-225 returns to the Assembly on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

Part of what has gone unanswered is who is supposed to answer it. The 500-foot rule the tribal council cites is state law, 3 AAC 306.010(a), and it binds the Marijuana Control Board rather than the Assembly. The regulation says the board will not issue a new license if the premises will be within 500 feet of a school ground, a recreation or youth center, a place of regular religious services or a correctional facility. State regulation measures that distance by the shortest pedestrian route from the public entrance. Its full text is more specific, and the specifics favour the objector: the route runs from the public entrance of the building holding the store to the outer boundaries of the recreation or youth center, not to that building's door. State guidance says the 500-foot limit allows no variance from the Marijuana Control Board. Asked in its own published questions and answers whether a local government can seek such a variance, the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office answers: "No. The 500 foot buffer zone is the inside limit for the proximity of a marijuana licensed establishment to a school, youth or recreation center, building where religious services are held, or correctional facility."

Anchorage applies a different list. Municipal code section 21.05.055 requires marijuana establishments to sit at least 500 feet from seventeen named uses, among them schools, playgrounds, child care centers, athletic fields, community centers and neighborhood recreation centers. A "recreation or youth center," the state's category, is not one of them. That gap is why the two questions can come out differently, and it is visible in the file: the Planning Department's compliance checklist marks the site as meeting the municipal separation standard, and the only explanation it gives is about playgrounds, noting that for playgrounds the distance is measured from equipment rather than parking. The record does not show whether that recommendation addressed the tribal council's buffer-zone objection. The checklist and the administration's memo do not mention the council, its building, or the state category.

The objection itself is five months old. "As stated in the attached notice, CITC's facility is within 500 feet of the proposed Muldoon Road location," wrote Kyan Olanna, chief legal officer for Cook Inlet Tribal Council, to the Municipal Clerk's Office, in an email dated March 24. The tribal council says the building houses the Denelchin Lab and meets the state definition of a "recreation or youth center," a classification that, if it applies, would bar a new retail marijuana license within 500 feet. The council also cited nearby playgrounds it says fall within the buffer zone. Olanna closed by asking which agency he was supposed to be writing to at all: whether the clerk's office was the right authority, or whether the council should take the concern to the state control office.

Business License Official Miranda Honest submitted the objection to the Planning Department. Her reply did not answer the question about which office. The exchange reached the Assembly on Aug. 4 as an attachment to an information memorandum of public comments.

The distance is the thing nobody has established. Cook Inlet Tribal Council's own site for the Denelchin Lab gives its address as 7710 Grass Creek Road, which is roughly 1,260 feet from 1431 Muldoon Road in a straight line, measured between the two addresses as geocoded by the U.S. Census Bureau. The route the regulation calls for, the shortest pedestrian route, is longer than a straight line, not shorter. Against that, the council received the notice at all because the Planning Department mailed 539 hearing notices to owners and residents within 500 feet of the site. Both facts are in the record and nothing in the record reconciles them.

The Assembly's file contains no response from the applicant to the objection. No statement from the applicant is available. The company's application narrative does address the buffer, and claims the opposite: the site "falls outside of the 500 feet," it says, listing thirteen protected uses and putting the closest, Chanshtnu Muldoon Park, at 733.8 feet. Cook Inlet Tribal Council's building is not on that list. The company's entity official is Baltazar Arias, and the site now holds Baltazar's Tire Shop and Alaska Auto Glass.

What the Assembly votes on Tuesday is the municipal license and the special land use permit. Section 7 of the resolution then directs the Municipal Clerk to notify the state control office that Anchorage's protest is lifted, which hands the state question along. State records list license 35490 for Sensimilla at 1431 Muldoon Road with a status of "Delegated" and no issue, effective or expiration date.