Revere, MA Cannabis Regulations: Buffer Zones (2026)

The 400-foot buffer comes from footnote 7 to the Table of Uses at Revere Municipal Code § 17.16.040, written as its own sentence rather than as a bare table figure, so there is no guessing which distance applies to which use. It protects residential uses, parks and playgrounds (including any area designated as an area of critical environmental concern), schools, and buildings or structures used for religious purposes. The measuring rule is specific: the 400 feet runs from the treatment center's principal entrance to the closest property line of the protected use, not from the parcel boundary or the building envelope as a whole. In a compact, beachfront city like Revere, where commercial lots along Broadway and Revere Beach Parkway sit close to residential blocks, that entrance-to-property-line measurement can be the difference between a compliant site and a rejected one.

Revere has no separate buffer schedule for recreational marijuana retailers, cultivators, testing labs or product manufacturers because the city does not allow them at all. Chapter 9.18 of the Revere Revised Ordinances, adopted under the local-option authority in M.G.L. c. 94G, § 3(a)(2), prohibits every type of non-medical marijuana establishment citywide. That leaves the medical marijuana treatment center, a not-for-profit entity registered with the Commonwealth, as the only marijuana use the zoning ordinance regulates, and the 400-foot buffer is the only siting standard that applies to it. An applicant must demonstrate compliance with the buffer during site plan review before the city can act on the underlying permit.