Businessman hopes South Berwick ME vote will OK recreational marijuana
7 min read
SOUTH BERWICK, Maine – One businessman behind two controversial petitions to approve recreational marijuana Operations in the city defended its proposals amid widespread opposition from the community ahead of a vote on Tuesday June 8th.
Eric Bergendahl, owner of wonder of nature on Ogunquit Road, said he filed the petitions in response to years of stalled business growth due to a moratorium imposed by South Berwick on new medical marijuana cultivation and production facilities.
In 2013, Bergendahl opened its first building for the medical extension. In 2014 he opened a second building. It wasn’t until 2015, when he opened his third growth building, that a neighbor complained about odor nuisance, which was one of the reasons why the city passed the cultivation moratorium in 2017, he said.
With the moratorium still in place, Bergendahl’s plans to group his three inefficient buildings under one 10,000-square-foot facility on the 40-acre lot that Nature’s Miracle is on have been halted – which, he said, prompted him last year hire a lawyer and get advice.
“A test of will of the people”:South Berwick weighs in recreational marijuana
“I didn’t want to be without a company in order to grow and move forward,” said Bergendahl. “It would be much nicer if the environment was controlled under one roof.”
So he developed and submitted two petitions that will appear on June 8th the ballot of the city. The first asks voters if the city should issue a proposed regulation on recreational marijuana Retail storesand the second asks if the city should issue a proposed regulation on recreational marijuana Cultivation and product manufacturing Investments.
The debate in South Berwick comes as a recreational marijuana store will open every day in the neighboring town of Eliot, one of the first stores of its kind in York County, according to Maines Marijuana Policy Office.
Legal Pot On Site In Maine:Eliot’s recreational marijuana shop is about to open
The crux of the matter is zoning
The proposals have proven controversial in South Berwick, not only because they would open the door to the non-medicinal cannabis trade, but also because they would allow recreational marijuana stores and grows to enter one of the zoning of the city.
Both regulations would prohibit recreational marijuana companies from being within 150 meters of public and private schools, and growing and manufacturing facilities would have to have at least 5 acres of land.
Local residents claimed during a March hearing that nearly 700 lots could be eligible under this new zoning ordinance for adult marijuana, but Bergendahl’s new attorney, Seth Russell, said the real number was much lower.
“The real total of 5 acres or more of land is only about 478, and that’s before you remove all of the protected land, land owned by the conservation project, and land owned by the city,” Russell said.
Not one weed moratorium, but two
South Berwick City Council passed the moratorium on medical growth facilities in July 2017. according to community records. The moratorium allows existing facilities to function under state law, but prohibits any new facilities or expansion of existing facilities.
The council decided in April 2021 another moratorium, this time in medical marijuana retail stores.
Some companies are already operating under the ordinance that sets the rules for retail medical marijuana stores in certain zones in South Berwick – this ordinance was approved by the city on Jan 14, 2020 – but the second moratorium paused any pending applications for building permits, certificates of use, site plans, conditional uses, or other required permits that must be presented to the city for medical marijuana retail.
Medical marijuana moratorium: South Berwick stops admitting new stores
Since the city passed its ordinance last year, there have been an increasing number of requests to establish or expand medical marijuana retail stores, according to the language of the moratorium.
City council vice chair Abigail Sherwood Kemble said the city needs a fair amount of time to understand the effects of medical marijuana. Sherwood Kemble has publicly opposed Bergendahl’s endorsement of the proposed regulations for adult use.
City council wishes the businessman had taken a collaborative approach
With marijuana coming to South Berwick, public participation in local government has grown steadily since it was elected in 2018, Sherwood Kemble said. Attending is a good thing, but recent petitions have caused a lot of confusion among residents, she said, adding that she wished Bergendahl had come directly to the council to come up with a plan. Together they could have developed a transparent end product that works for everyone in the city, she said.
“That’s really the way to get it out there,” Sherwood told Kemble. “There are so many different aspects of medical marijuana policy at the same time … I’ve found that when people talk about it or have a question, they get married and put in many of these different avenues.”
More:South Berwick City Council is raising the alarm over medical marijuana surgery
Sherwood Kemble said the council wants residents to decide what suits the city and believes that the proposals supported by Bergendahl, among other things, could conflict with the city’s comprehensive plan. City councils are likely to discuss marijuana in a full plan workshop meeting on July 28, Sherwood Kemble said.
City councils have drafted revisions to the existing medical marijuana cultivation and production ordinance and are likely to propose that the operations be allowed in the South Berwick Industrial Zone alone, Sherwood Kemble said. The moratorium will be extended until August 20, 2021.
On Wednesday, June 9th – the day after the city has voted on Bergendahl’s proposals – a joint workshop will take place between the city council and the planning committee to collect their results and discuss proposed changes.
Why he filed his petitions
Bergendahl said the city’s public order office was initially okay with granting him a license to run his business in 2013. They also told him that getting a license to have a 10,000-square-foot facility on his property in 2015 wouldn’t be a problem, he said.
Until the neighbors odor complaint after the commissioning of his third facility, there was no problem with the city or the neighbor, said Bergendal. The neighbor has since moved away, he said.
After Bergendahl checked with the city every few months whether there had been any progress in lifting the moratorium, Bergendahl said enforcement of the code told him nothing would happen unless he did.
“I did that,” he said. “I went to my lawyer and I got a referendum … I got 10% of the voters’ signatures and I got 30%.”
Although many voters told Bergendahl that they would not necessarily support or oppose his petition, he said he would give them the same speech: that despite the broad language of his proposals, growth facilities are based on state and already implemented local guidelines and inherent restrictions on the available land.
“You don’t have to agree to the petition,” he recalled, “just so we can get on the ballot and everyone can vote on it.”
Bergendahl bought a building for recreational cultivation in Lebanon, where he initially intends to begin with the cultivation. He hopes to open an adult storefront on his property on Ogunquit Road when the South Berwick Regulation passes.
If the petitions fail, Bergendahl said he could try again next year with a revised language. But that scenario is unlikely, he added.
Bergendahl said he believes the ordinance, however drafted, is unlikely to be approved by voters or city council unless it restricts recreational marijuana stores only to the industrial area. That would exclude his property, which is in a residential zone (R5).
Even if the city lifts its moratorium on medical marijuana cultivation, if the ordinance is revised to only allow plants in the industrial zone, Bergendahl will have many acres of land that cannot grow, he said.
“I don’t see why a rural route is not being considered,” he said. “That’s agriculture.”
Bergendahl’s story
Bergendahl said he became a licensed medical marijuana nurse in 2013. He previously served as a nurse for 26 years, specializing in ultrasound and intravenous therapy in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island, he said.
Bergendahl became interested in researching and learning about alternative medicine while working as a nurse.
“I learned about the health benefits of cannabis when I was researching the use of vitamin therapy to cure various types of diseases … I really got a lot of interest and that was when I moved to Maine in the early 2000s,” said Bergendahl.
At first he was nervous about following this, fearing backlash from friends and family over the stigma surrounding the industry.
Bergendahl knew that recreational marijuana transmission in South Berwick wouldn’t be easy, he said, but he didn’t expect the organized opposition to get what it is. In his view, direct government guidance would have helped avoid this, he said.
“I was concerned early on … the government did a good job of portraying it as a bad thing … I honestly believe the plant is a great plant, and I just felt like someone was going to see it negatively from a medical point of view , what a shame, ”said Bergendahl.
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