The Batavia City Council has approved plans for what would be the town’s first recreational marijuana dispensary.
With a large majority of support from the city’s aldermen on Tuesday night, Rubino Ventures can move forward with its plans to update a facility at 144 S. Randall Road and turn it into a Dutchess Cannabis dispensary, according to its proposal to the City Council.
Rubino Ventures plans to open the dispensary this summer.
Because the planned marijuana dispensary would be zoned in the general commercial district, it required a conditional use permit, explained Batavia’s Planning and Zoning Officer Drew Rackow on Friday. This means the plan had to first be reviewed by the Plan Commission at a public hearing and then approved by the City Council, as well as meet certain conditions.
The public hearing was held on Dec. 18. Tuesday’s approval by the City Council means Rubino Ventures can move on to obtaining the necessary permits from the city for building the store, Rackow said.
Dutchess Cannabis has two locations already in Oak Park and Morton Grove, with two additional stores in North Riverside and Lake Zurich underway, according to the company’s presentation at the Jan. 14 meeting of the City Council Committee of the Whole. The Batavia store is set to be their fifth location.
The planned location at 144 S. Randall Road was previously an Arby’s, but has been vacant since 2022, according to the proposal for the dispensary.
Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke said he publicly opposed recreational marijuana sales coming to Batavia when it was legalized in Illinois in 2020.
In the 2020 election, however, the city put the question to a vote, and more than 60% of voters in Batavia supported allowing recreational weed to be sold.
But that didn’t mean dispensaries immediately started flocking to the city.
“The businesses went other places – North Aurora and St. Charles and some of the other ones,” Schielke told The Beacon-News on Friday. “And then as time has moved on here, there’s more and more people saying, ‘Gee, I wish we had a store in Batavia.’”
Following the 2020 vote, the City Council put in place locational requirements for cannabis dispensaries, Rackow said, which the proposed dispensary is in compliance with.
But the dispensary’s location remained the subject of debate, as several residents – at both the Committee of the Whole on Jan. 14 and the City Council meeting on Tuesday – took to the public comment portion to express their concerns with safety and the location’s proximity to Batavia High School and Holy Cross Catholic School.
“Be much more concerned about underage alcohol sales than you are this,” City Council member Tim Lanci, 6th Ward, said at the Jan. 14 meeting. “They will not even be able to get in the door, much harder with a fake ID. The process to get inside of these places is like getting inside of Fort Knox.”
And Schielke said he was comforted by Dutchess Cannabis’ reputation in nearby communities.
“I talked to some of the folks in the immediate area there (in Oak Park and Morton Grove), and everybody I talked to had nothing but the highest, nice things to say about this company that wants to come into Batavia,” Schielke said on Friday. “They’re strictly by the rules, and they have a uniformed person meet everybody at the door. And you have to show your ID, that you’re over 21, and there’s no fooling around with them. We got a good one, I guess.”
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
