Wasilla pot shop near Knik Charter School surrenders its state license

The marijuana store 530 feet from Knik Charter School near Wasilla, which lost a two-year zoning fight in court, no longer holds a state license. As of Sunday, Sept. 27, the state license search lists the Shoreline Cannabis store at 4200 E. Snider Road as Surrendered.

The records do not show whether the surrender was voluntary or the final step in a state-ordered shutdown. The name has moved to a store on Spenard Road in Anchorage, which the state license search lists as Active-Operating under the same business license number. The court, borough and state board records behind this account include no statement from owner Justin Benson or from Knik Charter School.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough code requires a marijuana store to sit at least 1,000 feet from school grounds at the time it is established. Knik Charter began teaching on Aug. 16, 2022. Shoreline started its state application that April. It did not hold a borough permit until February 2025.

The borough Planning Commission denied Shoreline's conditional use permit, the local approval a pot shop needs to operate, in July 2024. The borough Board of Adjustment and Appeals reversed the denial that November. The appeals board dated Shoreline's establishment to June 5, 2020, when Lake Landing Investments LLC filed its company papers. That was 26 days before the charter school's grant application. The permit was issued, and the store opened.

The borough appealed. Superior Court Judge Jonathan A. Woodman in Palmer reversed the appeals board on Oct. 16, 2025. Its reading, he wrote, "would lead to an absurd result": any company could claim to have been established on the day it filed its articles, and so get around the buffer. He held that a business is established when it opens with its permits. "The Code clearly establishes that an operating school takes precedence over a proposed marijuana retailer," he added.

Benson asked the Alaska Supreme Court to review the ruling. In February the court answered in one line: "The Petition for Review is DENIED." On Feb. 19 the Board of Adjustment and Appeals affirmed the Planning Commission's original denial, and borough planner Rick Benedict wrote that the permit was revoked "effective immediately." The same day, the borough protested the state license, filing a formal objection with the Marijuana Control Board to renewing it.

At the board's April meeting, attorney Jana Weltzin said the store was not operating and that enforcement had been notified, according to the minutes. She asked the board to table the renewal "to allow time to finalize the transfer that is in place," and it did.

In June in Fairbanks, the board approved moving the Spenard Road license from AM Frontier Inc. to Lake Landing, owned 60 percent by Benson and 40 percent by Athena Rotzler. The board then upheld the borough's protest against renewing the Wasilla license. Both votes were 4-0, with one member absent.

The Supreme Court's refusal leaves Woodman's ruling standing in this case: a store's clock starts when it opens with its permits, not when its owner files company papers.