The Denver City Council is considering policy options to regulate recreational marijuana retail sales as a result of the passage of Amendment 64 in November of 2012. In order to formulate the rules that will govern the licensing of these facilities, decision makers needed to know the distribution of existing medical marijuana centers, infused product retailers, and grow facilities. An accurate and complete geospatial layer was needed for analysis and mapping purposes. This project required; data mining from the Excise and License Licensing Database, cross-referencing the results with data from the state to ensure completeness, and geo-verifying addresses via the Denver Address Database. ArcGIS ArcMap 10.0 SP 2 was used for analysis and cartographic purposes. The GIS layer, map and analysis were created by the City and County of Denver, Technology Services, Enterprise Data Management Team. Note: grow facilities have been left off this version of the map for security purposes.

1. Denver Amendment 64 Analysis
Technology Services – Enterprise Data Management l City and County of Denver l Doug Genzer 2013
In order to formulate the rules that govern the licensing of marijuana facilities, decision makers
needed to know the distribution of existing medical marijuana centers, infused product retailers, and
grow facilities. An accurate and complete geospatial layer was needed for analysis and mapping
purposes. This required mining the data from the Excise and License permitting application’s
database. This work was accomplished with cooperation from the subject matter experts to ensure
a clean pull of the data. This data was then cross-referenced with the State of Colorado’s licensing
database to ensure the completeness of the dataset. Next the addresses were validated through
the Denver Address Database and any issues with improperly formatted addresses resolved.
In the past for medical marijuana maps, a marijuana leaf symbol was used to
denote a dispensary. It helped make the dispensaries visually “pop” and be
easily identifiable. It is possible for one address to have up to three types of
license. A new “stacked” symbology was developed so that the viewer could tell
that a location had multiple licenses, and what type of licenses they were. The
ArcMap symbol levels dialog was used to ensure that the points would draw in
the correct order and all licenses could be seen. For security reasons the grow
facilities have been removed from the map to the left.
City council meetings are televised, so a presentation was prepared with symbology optimized for the
data being projected onto a screen and the airwaves. In addition to the existing Medical Marijuana
Centers, policy makers needed to know where schools, drug and alcohol treatment centers, and
licensed childcare providers were located. The only layer needed to be created for this inquiry was the
treatment centers. A variety of sources were used to produce the most accurate layer possible.
Legislation was proposed that retail marijuana licenses could only be issued if the applicant’s location was
more than 1,000 feet away from; another center, school, drug and alcohol treatment center, and licensed
childcare providers. A thousand foot buffer of these features was provided.
In order to complete the picture of where retail marijuana licenses could be issued a query was run
against the City’s Zoning Layer to show areas where potential retail locations would be allowed.
Using GIS to Develop Regulations and Legislation
Denver City Council also looked at a variety of buffer distances including 2,500 feet, but determined
that such regulations would be too restrictive.
Overlay analysis was performed and data aggregated at both the City Council
District and Neighborhood levels by license type and spreadsheets were
provided to City Council. A zoning district overlay of existing facilities was
also completed.