(Seguin) — The Seguin City Council wants to make sure that downtown Seguin isn’t overrun by a growing number of vape and CBD shops in the community.
Main Street and CVB Director Kyle Kramm says a concern was recently raised by a city about these types of shops going up in the downtown historic district. The city is not attempting to ban the shops from downtown, but Kramm says they are placing some distance requirements which should limit the number of shops that could open in the downtown historic district.
“My staff did a little bit of research on other communities and kind of followed along the path of what we have done for other uses of downtown so things like tattoo parlors, bars, pawn shops, bail bonds – they allhave distance requirements associated with that use within the downtown historic district. So, that is what the Main Street Advisory Board had recommended as a 300-foot distance which is the distance that all the other uses have – a 300-foot distance from another CBD or vape shop – 300 feet from a church and 300 feet from a school. That there then went on from Main Street to our Planning and Zoning Commission last month and our Planning and Zoning ultimately kept those three uses and the distance requirements for those but added 300 feet from parks and 300 feet from daycares as well. This would be a limited use permit which means that in order to get their certificate of occupancy through planning and zoning, they would also have to get a limited use permit where staff would measure the distance to make sure that that location meets the 300-foot requirement,” said Kramm.
The new restriction also spells out exactly what qualifies as a vape or CBD shop.
“We also added a definition for what a vape shop or CBD shop would be called. It’s a retail establishment that predominantly sells electronic cigarettes, E-Cigs, vapes, hookah, vape pens, electronic nicotine delivery systems – products containing THC and paraphernalia for the consumption of products containing THC so this would still allow some of our retailers -if they just wanted to add THC lotions or one case of vapes, they would still allow to do that without being called a Vape or CBD shop,” said Kramm.
The city’s Main Street Advisory Board and its Planning and Zoning Commission all weighed in on this issue. They made the recommendations that were unanimously approved by the council during its meeting on Tuesday night.