Mancos citizens gathered at the Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday to oppose LivWell’s potential purchase of the Millwood Junction restaurant building off U.S. Highway 160.
“Do we want a mega-marijuana outlet at the only stoplight in town?” Mancos resident Bobbi Black said at the board meeting.
The empty Millwood Junction building is at a main intersection of the town, Black said. A dispensary would pull tourists’ attention away from the historic buildings and artistic community in Mancos, and it could be off-putting to some, she said.
Don McKenna, a Mancos resident with a background in master planning for towns and cities, said the intersection of Colorado Highway 184 and U.S. Highway 160 is the “front door of Mancos.”
“How many people would turn off of that corner for marijuana or for food? My experience says ‘food,’” McKenna said.
A restaurant also is a major community employer that could keep tourists in town longer, McKenna said. It is also a spacious building that has room for socially distanced indoor seating in the winter during the pandemic, he said.
Nate Sete of LivWell attended the board meeting to address concerns.
“LivWell has been a big community member in Mancos,” Sete said. “We would bring more people to that anchor spot than a restaurant.”
Sete emphasized that LivWell would use the existing building for the dispensary – the company would not build a “mega-store.”
“We’re here to work with everyone,” Sete said.
The dispensary faces strict zoning and license requirements, and other properties LivWell has considered did not allow the company to meet the requirements or they were too expensive, Sete said.
“This is the last spot left,” he said.
The current LivWell store in Mancos, on Railroad Avenue and Beech Street, employs 13 people.
Mancos Liquor is across the street from the Millwood Junction building.
The restaurant closed late last year because of operational costs.
William Lapin, who owns the American Holiday Mesa Verde Inn in Cortez, bought the restaurant last fall. But he decided to sell it in December because he was “losing more than he was making,” he told The Journal at the time.
Mayor Queenie Barz said the town has not received an application from LivWell to purchase the building, but if it does there would “probably be a public hearing.”
ehayes@the-journal.com