GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals recently  approved the town’s second retail cannabis dispensary.

The board on July 16 gave permission to Yesorno LLC, which owns and operates Happy Days Dispensary in Farmingdale, Nassau County, to open a similarly-named dispensary at 1656 Western Ave., across Route 20 from the Tru by Hilton hotel.

The approval comes two months after the board OK’d a dispensary at 2028 Western Ave., once home to the Cone Zone ice-cream shop. 

The site sits in the town’s Local Business District and, similar to 2028 Western Ave., backs onto a residential neighborhood. The July 16 meeting, which acted as the project’s public hearing, saw no comments made, written or oral. 

Happy Days is to operate from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and from noon to 7 p.m., on Sunday. 

Perhaps the largest issue addressed by the board had to do with the dispensary’s parking. 

The existing parking arrangement necessitates vehicles backing out directly onto Alton Road, a configuration considered unsafe — especially considering its proximity to the intersection with Western Avenue — and one that would not be approved under current standards. 

“I think we need to have a conversation with the town highway superintendent,” Planning Board Chairman Stephen Feeney said during his board’s June 11 review of the project’s site plan. “I talked to Ken [Kovalchik], our town planner, briefly. What is [Highway Superintendent Bob Haver] going to permit? Is he going to permit you to basically use the town roadway as parking?”

 Haver wrote in a June 16 letter, “It is my opinion as Highway Superintendent to not have any parking on the west side of the building that faces Alton Road.”

On June 25, Happy Days’ submission to the planning board included an updated site plan that showed landscaping in place of the nine parking spots on the Alton Road side of the building; removal of the spots was also a condition of zoning board approval.