Pubdate: Tue, 03 Feb 2015
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Aguilar

POT PROMISES VAPORIZE

Ganjapreneur Threatens to Sue Wheat Ridge Over Scuttled Deal

Wheat Ridge - A man with dreams of building a cannabis shop and grow 
house on a quiet corner in Wheat Ridge is planning to sue the city 
for $ 700,000 after what he says was a broken promise that has cost 
him much of his investment.

Babak Behzadzadeh, a businessman who lives in Cherry Hills Village, 
accuses Wheat Ridge officials of assuring him and his partners for 
weeks that all was well with his plan last summer to locate a pot 
store at the southeast corner of Miller Street and West 38th Avenue.

He felt comfortable enough with the prospects for city approval that 
he paid $ 650,000 for the lot in July and within a few weeks spent $ 
50,000 removing the underground tanks of a long-time gas station.

"The gas station that was there was a disaster," Behzadzadeh said. 
"Wheat Ridge didn't want it."

He said city planning staff even told him he would face a streamlined 
approvals process for his pot facility if the gas tanks were gone.

But that spirit of cooperation quickly vanished after a group of 
neighbors caught wind of the project. Community ire prompted city 
leaders in August to put in place a moratorium on any new marijuana businesses.

"Once the locals came out against it, they ran for cover," 
Behzadzadeh said of the city.

And last week, the city council passed new pot regulations that 
essentially jettison Behzadzadeh's plan by capping the number of 
cannabis businesses in the city to the number that exist now-five 
shops and three product manufacturing facilities.

Neighbors say bad fit

Behzadzadeh said the new cap has devalued the land and he's now 
sitting on a parcel that is worth less than half of what he paid for 
it. He officially has notified Wheat Ridge that he plans to sue on 
grounds of "promissory estoppel"- that the city's broken promise cost 
him his investment.

"( The city) changed the rules of the game in the middle of our 
agreement," he said.

But Wheat Ridge Councilman Tim Fitzgerald said while Behzadzadeh and 
his business partners were victims of "unbelievably bad timing," the 
city did nothing wrong.

Fitzgerald said the planning department was simply letting 
Behzadzadeh know what his options were with the property ahead of 
filing a formal application with the city, which he hadn't yet done.

"It's not a broken promise - he wasn't promised anything," said 
Fitzgerald, noting that political realities can interfere with a 
developer's plans before they are finalized. "Maybe he thought that 
visiting with someone in the planning office was more than what it was."

Councilman George Pond said he and his colleagues on council had to 
respond to residents' concerns once they found out about them.

Despite holding more than a dozen public meetings on marijuana 
regulations over the past few years, Pond said attendance was sparse.

But when the project at 38th Avenue and Miller Street - which is 
surrounded by residential neighborhoods, including a gated community 
- - came into view, "everyone became activated about this issue," Pond said.

"We felt we had done the work on how the marijuana business could fit 
into our community, and what turned out is we hadn't received all the 
input we needed," he said. "It was pretty loud and clear that the 
number of pot shops we had was enough."

Most neighbor complaints revolved around familiar themes: a pot 
operation at that intersection would give off an odor, threaten 
property values and potentially expose children to the drug on their 
way to and from school.

Lee Reichardt, who lives on Miller Street just south of the proposed 
site, said a pot shop was a bad fit for the neighborhood. He said 
Behzadzadeh should have done more homework or gotten something in 
writing before buying the parcel for a marijuana business.

"I didn't care if he paid $ 1 million for the property, I didn't want 
to see another dope store in town," Reichardt said. "It would cut 
into the price of our house."

Behzadzadeh's lawyer, Jeff Gard, showed The Denver Post a series of 
e- mails between his client and city staff in which city employees 
made it clear the parcel was properly zoned for a marijuana business. 
There were also detailed discussions about setbacks and architectural 
issues at the site.

Rules change midway

Gard said the nature of the discussions amounted to a promise from 
Wheat Ridge to his client that the project complied with city rules 
and was good to go.

The Wheat Ridge city manager's office declined to comment on the 
dispute because of the threat of litigation.

"We followed their direction every step of the way and got blindsided 
by this change of heart and change of law," Gard said.

He said more than two years after Coloradans chose to legalize pot in 
the state, municipalities continue to wrestle with an industry that 
was stigmatized for decades. Even in communities like Wheat Ridge 
that allow the retail sale of pot, acceptance of the drug is far from 
universal.

"Cities can still be intimidated around the culture of fear 
surrounding marijuana," Gard said."Would they be doing this with a 
Noodles & Co. or a Chipotle?"
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom