Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
On March 16, 2026, the Benicia Zoning Administrator convened a public hearing at 3:00 PM in City Hall Council Chambers, with courtesy Zoom participation, to consider a single public hearing item: Use Permit application PLN-26-4 for a cannabis testing laboratory at 685 Stone Road, Units 9–10 (APN 0080-060-100), and a determination that the project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The hearing adjourned at 3:11 PM. (Note: the agenda lists the start time as 3:00 PM; the meeting metadata timestamp of 11:15:00+00:00 does not correspond to that local time.)
Laboratory. The applicant did receive approval for a prior use permit approval to do this type of uh use we're considering today uh back in uh 2020 from the planning commission. This facility would not be accessible to the public. Uh samples will be collected off site during normal business hours, um, and also there will be no on-site sales, um, access or signage. In terms of the laboratory, there would be standard uh testing equipment, standard procedures, um, nothing out of the door in terms of uh equipment or issues to bring up. I think the applicant expects to employ uh roughly uh 15 uh personnel there. Uh lastly, uh there would be shared parking, and there's ample parking um on site. As you can see on the um as shown in the plans, there are six spaces uh currently available for parking. I mentioned this previously, so I won't go into a lot of detail here, but in terms of background, the facility does currently operate as an existing uh laboratory, which is a permitted use within the IG uh district. If this were approved, it would expand services to include cannabis testing, which does require a use permit. As I uh touched on a minute ago, the applicant did receive prior approval for this use uh from the planning commission back in uh March of 2020. Uh, there was also a cannabis public safety license granted at that time, March uh 28th of 2020. In terms of construction, there were some uh minor tenant improvements completed at that time. Um, there are no further improvements proposed as part of this project. Um, all improvements have been previously completed. And in terms of what brought us here uh today, there was a as I mentioned, there was a public safety license that was uh approved in 2020. Uh unfortunately was not reviewed in 2024. That did result in the uh termination of the previous useprint approval, so today we have a new one to consider as well as uh there's a public safety license um application in as well. Uh moving on to the site plan, uh, this just shows the uh site area off of uh 685 Stone Road, um, suites uh nine and ten. You can see the parking there as well. This next slide highlights the floor plan and the uh the work that was completed, the proposed uh area of the use. So there's a series of findings that have to be made for use permit to be approved. These next uh three or four slides uh detail those findings. Uh in the interest of time, I'm not gonna walk through um every single finding, but they are in the staff report and they're also included uh in this presentation. These are findings for uh the cannabis businesses that come directly from the Banesian municipal code. And terms of uh testing labs, there's also some specific findings shown on this slide that uh pertain to that type of use. So for CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, we've evaluated this and found uh it's likely exempt under section 15301 for existing facilities. Um, as I mentioned previously, there's no uh expansion proposed, there's no uh construction proposed uh with this, so we believe this exemption would be the most appropriate one to use. And then I will just wrap up with uh public notification and comment. Um February 26th, notice was mailed to property owners within 500 feet. Um notice was access was also posted at the property earlier uh this month and a city hall, and to date we've received no uh public comments on the item, and that does conclude staff's presentation.