PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson is nothing if not persistent.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s introduced her 10th piece of legislation aimed at tobacco sales and nuisance businesses, but she says retailers keep finding loopholes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt becomes this game of cat and mouse, and that\u2019s why we\u2019ve had to introduce the amount of legislation that we\u2019ve introduced,\u201d Richardson explained.<\/p>\n
The newest bill creates a new zoning designation for smoke shops and limits by-right zoning to a very few locations citywide, making it more difficult for new shops to open.<\/p>\n
Richardson says she hopes to stop their proliferation on commercial corridors, especially those near schools, daycares and rec centers. But she says the city is stymied both by a 2018 state law that prohibits the city from imposing new regulations on tobacco sales and by retailers finding ways around each new law they are able to pass.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are hopeful that this piece of legislation will be the one that will make a difference for our communities,\u201d said Richardson.<\/p>\n
Several community organizations support Richardson\u2019s quest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to improve Ridge Ave and make it a thriving business corridor,\u201d said Darnetta Arce of the Lower North Philadelphia CDC, \u201cbut we have so many smoke shops, people don\u2019t want to come to Ridge Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richardson said those complaints are exactly why she\u2019s continuing to spar with these nuisance businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are empowering our neighborhoods and our communities to be more clear about what kind of businesses they want to open in their communities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson is nothing if not persistent. She\u2019s introduced her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,5648,71,70,53422,16938],"class_list":["post-307230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-city-council","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-smoke-shop","tag-smoking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}