Cannabis Shop Application Renewed With Questionable Distance Survey

Last June I reported that there was a new permit application for a retail cannabis shop at 1658 33rd St. This confused me because there is another licensed cannabis shop at 1641 Wisconsin Ave. Cannabis retail shops are not allowed to open within 400 feet of another licensed cannabis shop. And by a quick look at Google Maps, it’s pretty clear the buildings are well under 400 feet apart:

I complained to ABCA and they duly responded that: “yes, you’re right these properties are too close” and the application was revoked. Here’s the board’s decision on that:

ABCA doesn’t rely on Google Maps, they use the city’s geographic software. But it came to about the same number:

First, how come the application even got this far? Well the board’s decision sheds some light on that. Instead of using a map, they sent out an inspector with a measuring device. He couldn’t walk a straight line between the buildings because the African Union building is in the way. And moreover, it’s pretty hard for a hum to walk a straight line diagonally across a busy street like Wisconsin Ave. So he meandered a bit and ended up over 400 feet. The board disregarded his measure and relied on the mapping software and tossed the application.

No harm, no foul, right? Well it seems the applicant decided to take matters into their own hands. They hired an architect to make his own measurements, and wouldn’t you know it, he somehow discovered and extra 25 feet. As you can see from his report, he utilized the pythagorean theory (i.e. a^2+b^2=c^2) to conclude that the two properties are actually 400.4 feet apart:

Basically this report claims that if you overlaid a right triangle where the two points just touch the two properties, the hypotenuse would be 400.4 feet long. Therefore the applicant’s location is permissible.

A couple things about this report: The long blue line of the report is supposedly 384.1 feet long. I attempted to recreate this line in Google maps and I got a much shorter figure: 363 feet. (For what it’s worth, I arrived at the same figure for the other blue line.)

That’s not remotely close. So when I plug my own numbers into the Pythagorean theory I get: 379 feet, i.e., basically what I said it was in the first place! These two buildings are definitely not 400 feet apart!

But how could a licensed surveyor make this mistake? I don’t know, but perhaps it’s because the person hired by the applicant isn’t a licensed surveyor in DC. He is only a licensed architect and that’s how he signed the report. This is where I’ll note that it’s against the law to perform survey work in DC without a license.

Did he make an honest mistake when he magically reached a conclusion that the two properties are exactly far enough apart or was it something else? I’ll let you decide!

Despite the fact that this report flies in the face of the city’s own geographic data, the ABC Board decided to reinstate the application and leave the dispute to the protest hearing to decide. This is unfortunate, since it will require time and, likely, money to have this obviously invalid application thrown out again.

In any event, I plan to recommend that the ANC protest this license and I will recommend that we hire an actual surveyor to submit an actually legal survey report that tells us what we already know: these two buildings are within 400 feet apart.