The opening of Forest Park’s third dispensary may be on the horizon.
The planning and zoning commission voted unanimously Oct. 21 to recommend that the village council approve a conditional use permit for Mint IL LLC’s dispensary to replace the currency exchange at 7207 Roosevelt Road.
Chairperson Marsha East and Board Member Paul Price were absent from the meeting.
The village council must vote on whether to approve the conditional use permit, which is required because dispensaries are only allowed in industrially zoned areas, per the village’s zoning code, and the corner of Harlem and Roosevelt is a commercial district. If Mint’s dispensary is approved, it will join Parkway Dispensary, which opened on Madison Street earlier this month, and Bloc Dispensary, which is coming to Circle Avenue early next year.
The October commission meeting was the second in which the only agenda item was to discuss a conditional use permit for Mint dispensary to open shop inside the 2,160-square-foot building.
At the first meeting in September, the commission asked Omar Fakhouri — co-owner of Mint IL LLC and operator of a cannabis cultivation plant at 7550 Industrial Dr. — to return the following month to address their concerns, including the dispensary’s signage, ingress and egress to the property, plus a more detailed site and floor plan.
At the October hearing, Fakhouri provided a detailed site plan and preliminary floor plan. He also included a security overlay with plans for cameras, sensors and panic buttons. The commission had asked him for more details about that last month.
Fakhouri also said Mint agreed to the commission’s suggestion to post a sign indicating that cars can only turn right onto Roosevelt Road out of the property’s parking lot, although the sign isn’t required for conditional use permit approval. Mint will address a sign permit, which is part of the village’s building code, if its conditional use permit is approved, according to Steve Glinke, director of the department of public health and safety.
The board also asked for a “Do Not Enter” sign by the alley north of the building — or blocking off the alley all together — to avoid traffic cutting through to Elgin Avenue.
Glinke said Christopher B. Burke Engineering told him it’s not necessary to divide the alley from the parking lot. But staff recommended that the conditional use permit has a condition of approval that says if people do cut through the alley, the village can oblige Mint to prevent patrons from using it to access the dispensary.
While six people spoke during public comments at the September meeting, only one spoke this time to ask for more specifics about the hypothetical number of vehicles visiting the dispensary.
Glinke said that Christopher B. Burke Engineering told him Mint didn’t need to do a traffic study. But Mint’s most-recent submission to the commission included a traffic impact statement.
The statement, conducted by Kenig, Lindgren, O’Hara, Aboona Inc. of Rosemont, found that traffic generated by the dispensary will likely not have a detrimental impact on existing transit around that intersection. The group said that the dispensary would increase traffic on adjacent roadways by less than 1%.
On average, Harlem Avenue carries nearly 30,000 vehicles a day in both directions of travel, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. Roosevelt Road carries an average of nearly 24,000 daily vehicles west of Harlem Avenue and 17,000 east of Harlem Avenue.
“What I have a hard time putting in my mind is the difference between the businesses that are there and what you have,” East said to Fakhouri at the September meeting. “The fact is Harlem and Roosevelt is always going to be a nightmare of an intersection.”
According to the civil engineering firm, Mint dispensary won’t affect that “nightmare” traffic too much.
If approved, the dispensary is expected to be open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. An average customer will spend no more than 10 minutes in the store, according to Mint.
Based on the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ “Trip Generation Manual,” 23 people are expected to visit the dispensary during the busiest hour in the morning, and 41 during the busiest evening hour. The dispensary is estimated to have a total of 456 daily customers.