Above is a photograph of the new marijuana retail store, or at least it is being considered. Embarc, a marijuana conglomerate in the Bay area recently lost out on a site in the Cherrywood strip mall because the police decided that they could not protect shoppers or local residents. The city government and embark frantically searched for a location and found this one.
It would have been difficult for anyone to find a worse location. Let’s start with the location itself. The site used to be a garage that worked on cars and trucks for several years. Next door is a vacant lot that has been used to store heavy trucks and construction. It would seem likely that the site could and should fall under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency. The site should he completely cleaned up before anyone or anything moves into the location. The building on the site is quite run-down. Likely they are going to have to knock it down and build a completely new facility.
Let’s take a look at the surrounding area. Directly across the street from the new location is the Purple Lotus school location. The driveway where cars enter the Purple Lotus Complex is in Union City while the complex itself sits in Fremont. Fremont does not allow marijuana sales in stores like Embarc wants to build and Purple Lotus, for obvious reasons, is absolutely against any marijuana sales outlet, let alone one that students at the school could just walk to during a lunch break. Another school, a Montessori private school is approximately one-fifth of a mile from the outlet, just over the rail track overpass.
Perhaps one of the more significant problems is where the store would sit in relation to Alvarado-Niles Road. In 2023, a traffic study found that Alvarado-Niles is the most dangerous street in the city with over 250 car crashes (with seven being either fatal or severe injuries). That is something like an accident a week for that period. Embarc has said that they would install a stop light at that location. They may not be possible as engineers have said that that overpass was not designed to hold several cars and trucks sitting at a red light. As long as a few cars are on it at a time, no problems. Put several cars and trucks on the overpass, stopped for a signal, problems can occur. The measured westbound average speed on that overpass is 50+ miles per hour. If there is a car waiting to turn into that location and a car traveling at the average speed goes over the crest of that overpass, they have 4 seconds to stop. That is 4 seconds to recognize the car in your way, hit the brakes, and go from 50+ miles per hour to zero with gravity increasing your speed. If it is raining, the situation could quickly become deadly.
This is a bad situation, all the way around. With crime soaring at marijuana stores all over the Bay area, do we really need another one? One at a dangerous location that is too close to homes and schools. As a city we need to rise up and either convince the city council to drop this ridiculous plans or band together and recall them all from holding public office. They will have blood on their hands for the rest of their lives and we need to remind them everyday.
