Three Coastal Highway 101 locations and one El Camino Real Spot have won the city’s lottery for retail cannabis licenses.
After the one-and-a-half-hour lottery draw on Friday, Oct. 21, City Planning Manager Jennifer Gates said the next step in the process will be a detailed city review of each of the four businesses’ applications. Once this process is complete, they will be issued the new license.
The four proposed locations, listed in the order selected by the lottery, are:
- 1038 S Coast Highway, mid-block location in Encinitas. The north end of that block houses a fish shop, and the south end is home to Incitas Ale. The applicant for the cannabis business is Siesta Life Encinitas LLC.
- 1030 N. Coast Highway, Leucadia area south of Diana Street and a little north of Lepagayo Restaurant. The applicant is SGI Encinitas AP LLC.
- 583 S. Coast Highway, a downtown location on the east side of the freeway, is just north of the E Street intersection and within the same block as Mott at Tequila, Roxy and Incitas Cafe. The applicant, Humanity Encinitas 4 Inc.
- 211 N. El Camino Real, station south of Cotixan Restaurant and north of self-service car wash. It is between the intersections of Mountain Vista Drive and Molena Road. The applicant is Ecrencinitas4 LLC.
City voters began taking steps to allow Incitas retail cannabis sales in 2020 with Measure H, which authorized four cannabis retail sales businesses, as well as cultivation, manufacturing and distribution businesses, subject to certain rules and restrictions.
Applicants for retail business licenses had until February 18 to submit their proposals to the city, and the city received about 200 applications. Preference is given to applicants with at least 12 months of experience as a cannabis business owner, 36 months as a pharmaceutical business owner, and 18 months as an Encinitas business owner. 171 applicants who met the three criteria were placed at the top level of the lottery process, and all four business applicants were selected from that level on Friday, October 21, 2009.
The lottery, which was held at the city council meeting hall at the city hall, was not open to the public but was broadcast live on the city’s website. While most of the process seemed to go smoothly, there was a problem at first just before the first winning number was drawn.
“I’m going to put all the balls back in the machine because a ball is dropped,” Gates, who ran the lottery, told the live stream audience.
That is not a quick process.
Each of the 171 applications is represented by a red and white, marble-sized, numbered ball. Each ball is initially placed in metal trays numbered upwards. For each of the four drawings, a camera pans trays of numbered balls to ensure the live stream audience has the correct balls in the tray, then the balls are plucked from the trays and thrown one by one into a view-through metal-mesh lottery spinning machine. As each ball entered the machine, Gates called the number. The 171-ball first reload took about six minutes from start to finish.
Restrictions on successful lottery winners – they had to be at least 1,000 feet from another applicant – and some unsuccessful applicants’ balls were removed after each drawing.
The first lottery winner – 1038 S. Coast Highway – I don’t delete apps other than the one the same company keeps for the site next door. The second winner — the 1030 N. Coast Highway station in Leucadia — eliminated several Leucadia Boulevard and Coast Highway locations. The third winner — the downtown 583 S. Coast Highway site — edged out three other Coast Highway sites, two sites on Second Street and one on F Street. Because many locations had multiple retail applications and a large number of balls in the lottery, each elimination process involved removing multiple balls.
In addition to being allowed to be located near another cannabis business, the four retail operations must be at least 1,000 feet away from “stimulating amenities” such as schools, daycare centers and playgrounds. They can operate between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., and must have security cameras, alarms and 24-hour guards, city ordinances state.
For information about the lottery and the business licensing process, visit the city’s website at https://encinitasca.gov/Government/Departments/Development-Services/Planning-Division/Policy-Planning/Cannabis-Ordinance-Measure-H
