City staff oppose Iqaluit cannabis store’s relocation
Higher Experience wants to move to a new site before lease expires
Owners of Higher Experience, a cannabis store in Iqaluit, are asking the City of Iqaluit to rezone a nearby property to allow it to move there when its lease expires in August, but the city’s planning staff says the new location is too close to sensitive uses. (File photo by Arty Sarkisian)
An Iqaluit cannabis store is facing opposition from city staff over its proposed move to a new location before its current lease expires.
Kevin Ikeno, who co-owns Higher Experience with his former wife Frances Ikeno, asked the city to rezone a property at 609 Mattaaq Cres. to allow a cannabis shop to operate there.
It’s approximately a 30-metre move from the store’s current location at 70 Fred Coman St., according to a report on the agenda for Tuesday evening’s planning and development committee meeting.
“The proposed site is within the same building as residential units and close to a daycare and school,” the planning report says.
It’s not an “appropriate distance” from schools and what the report called other sensitive areas.
The proposed location would be 134 metres away from a playground, 133 metres from Nakasuk School, and 15 metres from Pairivik Daycare.
The new site is “literally across the street” from the store’s current location, said Frances Ikeno in an interview Tuesday.
She said the company faced the same questions from council before opening at its current location — too close to a school, too close to a playground — that it faces now.
Council approved the rezoning then and it should do so now for the new spot, she said.
For the time being, she said, the company is taking things “step by step” and will decide how to proceed after council makes its decision.
Higher Experience’s lease on its current site is set to expire in August.
The Ikenos have had more than a three-year history of legal fights with their landlord, Northview Residential REIT.
They took Northview to court in 2024, alleging they had a verbal agreement with the property company’s regional manager to extend the lease. Northview argued that the deal was invalid, but a judge sided with the cannabis company and ordered the lease to be extended until August 2026.
City staff are acting like a bunch of Karens and this seems more motivated by personal animosities than any real risk to the community or the kids from a cannabis store. Maybe they should be more focused on the mayhem created by the beer and wine store.
If you watched the meeting last night and read the report you would know that City staff did not support the rezoning as it would be against what council already had approved in the general plan previously. Staff just implement council plans and direction and the last time they approved a weed store they had the same issue. Unfair for Nunatsiaq to try and pin this on staff, when staff just applied the rules council imposes.
the city can and should do better than this. Will the city assist them in finding a new location??? Will the city help??? This shows the city doesn’t care about businesses ; either that or someone in the city is playing favorites. This is the same city, who’s poor oversight and policies allowed an engine to get stolen from their own yard, from one of their city trucks. Seriously wtf.
What does policy have to do with someone breaking and entering and stealing parts? Fine to criticize on supporting business or a new location but not seeing the connection with how policy from the City will prevent petty crime.
The City should approve the new location across the street children are seeing a lot worse at home than a business they can’t get into.
If you don’t want business in building with residential units stop allowing this combination to be built. City do better for small business otherwise we will see none of the businesses we need or deserve.
It’s moving a whopping 30 meters away. Further away from a daycare, and maybe 20 meters closer towards the school.
HOWEVER, the new location is NOT visible from any part of the school grounds due to homes blocking the view. If anything this makes them leas visible to both the daycare and Nakashuk.
This is embarrassing on city council’s part. If they are suggesting they are protecting citizens, why are the in a rush to shut this down, but took half of a decade to even acknowledge the problems by the BnW?
There is a bar closer to the high school, than this store would be to Nakashuk
Spineless, moral cowards terrified to make a simple, largely inconsequential decision.