Lapeer Caps Marijuana Shops After a Split Commission Vote

Lapeer locked adult-use marijuana retail at 6 licenses on December 2, 2024, on a 3-2 City Commission vote. The same package capped growers and processors, banned shops from downtown and mixed-use streets, and made every marijuana use a special land use.

City Manager Mike Womack had spent a year rewriting the code after a freeze on new applications. The first hard test was not a new shop. It was the city clerk refusing to renew grow licenses at a Saginaw Street plant the neighborhood had been smelling for years.

The Commission Split 3-2 on December 2

Commissioners Atwood, Brady, and Glisman voted yes. Commissioners Petrie and Swindell voted no. Clerk Romana Sanchez certified the December 2 adoption and published notice on December 15, 2024, with the rules taking effect December 22, 2024, seven days later.

October 21, 2024, is when Womack brought the package into a regular meeting, which is why the first accounts dated the rewrite to that night. Zoning still had to go through the Planning Commission, so the binding vote came in December. Brady introduced the full set on November 18, 2024, covering Chapter 7 zoning, Chapter 68 medical facilities, and Chapter 69 adult-use businesses.

THE PATH TO THE DECEMBER VOTE

1. January 2024: The city pauses new marijuana license applications for six months while staff list holes in the old code.
2. July 2024: The commission extends that freeze another six months.
3. August 12, 2024: Womack briefs a joint session of the commission, Planning Commission, Downtown Development Authority, and Zoning Board of Appeals on license limits, downtown bans, a 1,500-foot grower buffer, outdoor-waste rules, odor systems, and special land use.
4. October 10, 2024: Planning Commission sets a November 14 public hearing on the zoning sections.
5. November 18, 2024: Brady introduces the zoning and licensing amendments together.
6. December 2, 2024: The commission adopts the package 3-2.

Womack wrote the drafts with individual commissioners and the city attorney. The freeze was already in place because staff had found gaps in zoning, transfers, and enforcement, including smell leaving grow buildings.

Six Retail Licenses, Eight Grow Seats

Adult-use Chapter 69 now lists six adult-use retailer licenses, eight grower licenses across Class A, B, or C, five processor licenses, and unlimited safety-compliance labs. Medical Chapter 68, rewritten the same night, sets six provisioning centers, two growers, three processors, and unlimited testing labs.

LAPEER MARIJUANA LICENSE CAPS

If the commission later cuts those numbers by ordinance, shops that already hold licenses may still seek renewal. A license that lapses, is revoked, or is handed back does not go back on the market unless the commission passes a resolution asking for new applicants. That clause can shrink the local industry without a matching vote to grow it.

An adult-use retailer may operate only where a medical provisioning-center license is also approved at the same site. Microbusinesses, consumption lounges, and event organizers are barred. Each city license runs one calendar year and carries an annual fee of not more than $5,000. The code calls the license a revocable privilege, not a property right, and forbids leasing or borrowing against it.

State adult-use records still show shops on the main commercial streets, including Consume Cannabis at 2401 W. Genesee Street, Xplore Cannabis Company at 824 S. Main Street, and House of Dank at 200 E. Genesee Street. The numerical cap has not made those corridors look empty. Genesee and Main still read as stacked with storefronts even with retail locked at 6.

Mixed-Use Streets Lose the Grow Rooms

Every marijuana use is now a special land use. That means a public hearing and a Planning Commission vote on compatibility, traffic, and nuisance, not a clerk stamp on a permitted-use checklist. Grow rooms had been drifting toward mixed commercial blocks; the rewrite ends that path.

No marijuana facility of any type may sit in the Central Business Zoning District or the Downtown Development Authority district. The mixed-use overlay now lists industrial uses and all marijuana uses as not permitted, which pulls grow and retail out of the overlay that sits over older industrial edges near downtown. Business and office districts list every marijuana use as not permitted.

The industrial No. 1 and No. 2 use tables do the rest. Growers are barred in Industrial No. 1 and allowed only as a special land use in Industrial No. 2. Processors, safety labs, and retailers may seek special land use in both industrial districts. In short, new canopy is supposed to land in heavier industrial ground, and storefronts are supposed to stay off Nepessing and the overlay.

WHERE THE NEW MAP PUTS A SHOP

• Downtown and DDA: No marijuana facility of any type.
• Mixed-use overlay: Industrial uses and all marijuana uses listed as not permitted.
• Business and office districts: Retail, grow, processing, and testing listed as not permitted.
• Industrial No. 2: Growers, processors, labs, and retailers as special land uses.
• Industrial No. 1: Processors, labs, and retailers as special land uses; growers not permitted.
• Adult-use retail: Only where a medical provisioning center is already approved at the same location.

Lapeer Cultivation still holds a path on that industrial map. Planning commissioners gave the project contingent site-plan approval on September 12, 2024, for 3163 John Conley Drive, then a one-year extension in September 2025. That is the grow model the new code prefers: a park site, not a pole barn on a mixed street.

What Buffers Apply to a Lapeer Marijuana Shop?

A new Lapeer marijuana shop must sit 1,000 feet from preexisting K-12 schools, 500 feet from licensed child-care centers, and 200 feet from designated public parks, not counting trail ways and cemeteries such as Linear Park and Oakdale Cemetery. Growers need another 1,500-foot gap from all R-1 single-family lots. Distances run in a straight line from property line to property line, including land outside the city, as measured by the Assessing Department.

Public-facing shops may open only from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. All activity has to stay inside a secure building. Outdoor display, production, sales, and storage of marijuana are banned. Waste may sit outside only for the shortest pickup window, no longer than 12 hours, and only after it is made unusable. Home businesses and accessory grow or sales uses are out.

The smell rule is the clause staff wrote for Saginaw Street. Every marijuana building, licensed or not, must run an engineer-stamped odor control system, such as activated carbon, with negative air pressure so leaving air hits the filters first. Doors and windows stay shut except for coming and going. Filters change at least every 365 days, or sooner if the maker says so. Installing the gear is not a city warranty that a neighbor will never smell the crop. Owners still have a continuing duty to keep odor from being detectable to a reasonable person of normal sensitivities past the property line.

A municipal civil infraction for a Chapter 69 breach carries a fine of not more than $500, with the police department, code enforcement, city manager, and city attorney named as enforcers, plus the option of a court injunction.

A Lapsed License Does Not Return Automatically

Womack told the August 12, 2024 joint boards that transfer language in the old code was a problem. The rewrite answers that with a two-track rule. A license is valid only for the named licensee, the disclosed business type, and the listed address. The location itself does not move. A site change is treated as a new application.

Owners who were already named as stakeholders when the license issued may shuffle shares among themselves after 30 days’ written notice to the clerk, state preapproval, a check that the shop is not in default, and sign-off from administration, police, building, and fire. Selling any piece to someone who was not on the original application requires City Commission approval and the same review as a brand-new license.

That is the incumbent moat. Partners already on the paper can rearrange. An outsider who wants in walks the full gauntlet, and only if a slot is open. If a shop goes dark for more than 90 days, including during a sale, the clerk may deny or revoke. First-come, first-served filing applies only after planning and zoning clearance, and only when the commission has opened a window. The clerk may not even take applications unless the commission says so.

At the December 2, 2024 meeting, a resident named Brian warned that license counts should live in the ordinance, not in a resolution a future board could flip without a hearing. The adopted tables sit in the code. Reopening a dead slot still takes a commission resolution seeking applicants, which is the remaining shortcut, and the remaining brake.

Saginaw Street Puts the Odor Clause on Trial

The state’s adult-use roster lists SDRK Group LLC at 207 S. Saginaw Street under three Class C grower licenses. In late December 2025, the city clerk denied two of the company’s local grow-license renewals over odor. Under the ordinance, SDRK had 21 days to appeal that clerk decision to the commission.

On January 5, 2026, Jacob Dicow, a managing partner at SDRK Group, told commissioners the company had put about $8 million into a former industrial site and employed 26 people. He said a nonrenewal would close the plant.

To take the position of not renewing our license is effectively shutting down this business and along with it, the jobs it has brought and the investment made in the city of Lapeer.

Jacob Dicow, managing partner, SDRK Group, Lapeer City Commission, January 5, 2026

On March 16, 2026, co-owner Eddie Shango told the same board the company had spent more than $200,000 on improvements in the prior year. Attorney John Frazier of Dykema called the hearing an administrative appeal of the clerk’s denial and said a licensee for an existing license has a renewal expectation. He asked commissioners to look at the building before using nonrenewal, which he called the harshest penalty. An engineer hired by SDRK described a faster retrofit of about six weeks and a fuller air overhaul of about six months. The commission put a final vote off to its April 6, 2026 meeting for more review and possible site visits. That later result is not in the public records retrieved for this report. The state roster compiled for the following fiscal year still listed SDRK at 207 S. Saginaw Street under those three Class C licenses.

The clash is the 2024 text working as written. Frazier argued for a renewal expectation. The ordinance says a city license is a revocable privilege and that odor past the property line is a continuing duty, even after an engineer stamps a filter plan. Womack’s package was sold as clearer rules for operators already on the ground and for anyone still waiting outside the freeze. For the shops that made it onto the 6-retail list, the scarce paper is now the asset. For a grower the clerk would not renew, the same paper is the lever.

John Conley Drive still has a grow project on a clock. Saginaw Street still has a plant the city tried to cut off. Until the commission passes a resolution seeking applicants, a license that dies in Lapeer stays dead.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on City of Lapeer ordinances and public meetings and is for information only. It is not legal advice, is not a substitute for reading the adopted code, and does not tell any person whether to apply for, transfer, renew, or challenge a marijuana license. Readers who need advice on a specific license, site, or appeal should consult a Michigan attorney who handles municipal marijuana licensing. License counts, fee amounts, buffer distances, and application windows are those published in the city code and related public records and can change if the commission amends the ordinances or opens a new filing window.