Galesburg city council members are reviewing new zoning rules that accommodate medical marijuana facilities.
Illinois spacing requirements limit where medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation centers can be located.
The facilities can’t be in residential areas or near schools with a 1,000 feet buffer for dispensaries and 2,500 feet for cultivation centers.
Galesburg’s Community Development Director Roy Parkin says that made it somewhat difficult to find space for them.
“Really under the state law you can’t restrict them or ban them,” Parkin said. “You gotta establish reasonable zoning requirements. But under the spacing requirements the city doesn’t really have a whole lot of choice of where we are going to allow them at in the first place.”
Both would be allowed in the city’s industrial zones. Dispensaries would also be permitted in some general business areas.
There’s no guarantee a cultivation center or dispensary will come to Galesburg. Illinois law limits the number of those facilities that can open across the state.
