To travel from Chelsea Cannabis Co., a new dispensary at 104 7th Ave., to New Amsterdam, a competing weed vendor that recently opened at 245 West 14th St., a pedestrian has to walk two blocks south, turn a corner and then walk halfway to 8th Avenue.

To some New Yorkers, it may seem the shops are a reasonable distance apart. After all, during the boom of unlicensed weed bodegas that followed legalization in 2021, it was common to find two or three such stores crowded onto a single block, often announcing their presence with giant cartoon weed leaves and neon bubble letters.

But these legal dispensaries in Chelsea are less than 1,000 feet apart, the minimum distance that’s supposed to separate cannabis retailers under state regulations, at least while the legal market gets established. That’s a span of more than three city blocks, on average. As New York hands out more dispensary licenses and competition for real estate heats up, state cannabis regulators have started using their discretion to grant exceptions to the 1,000-foot rule for dispensaries that can show they will provide a “public convenience and advantage” by opening in their desired location.

But that practice has faced pushback from some cannabis businesses and members of the public, for different reasons, forcing state regulators to revise their rules around the process for granting these distance waivers. It has also raised the question: How densely packed should dispensaries be?

“ I would never argue with a free market situation, but I would argue with saying one thing and doing another,” said Daniel Morena, founder of Chelsea Cannabis Co., who says the state’s watering down of the 1,000-foot rule is unfair to those who had to abide by it.

The company is one of four businesses that recently sued the Office of Cannabis Management for granting exceptions to the rule. A dispensary run by the nonprofit Housing Works, which recently opened on 30th St. and 6th Ave., also joined the suit, as did stores in Bushwick and Downtown Brooklyn.

All of them had received “proximity protection” from the state for their locations, a designation that is generally supposed to block competitors from opening within a 1,000-foot radius.

Morena said his team had limited options for where they could open in the city, partly because they were trying to respect the 1,000-foot boundaries of other stores. State regulations also bar dispensaries from opening within 200 feet of a house of worship or 500 feet from a school.

The landlords of compliant properties “know that they’re the only ones that qualify, so they jack the price up or they have really difficult terms,” Morena said. He said he and his team justified the investment in their space, in part, because of the promise of proximity protection.

Sasha Nutgent, the vice president of retail at Housing Works Cannabis Co., said the 1,000-foot rule “was specifically designed to protect social equity operators from market oversaturation and ensure public health.”

Waivers should only be considered once the market “reaches maturity,” she added.

Housing Works’ cannabis enterprise so far isn’t hurting for revenue. Its first dispensary in the East Village, which was also the first to open in the state, reported $20 million in sales last year from more than 200,000 transactions.

In January, the Office of Cannabis Management announced that the state’s 300 or so licensed dispensaries had topped $1 billion in revenue since the market launched in late 2022.

Under the latest proposed regulations the state Office of Cannabis Management will consider exceptions to the distance rules based on factors such as consumer demand in the area and whether there’s an obstruction such as a highway between the two dispensaries in question.

The New York State Liquor Authority uses similar discretion to determine whether to approve a new liquor store based on its own “public convenience and advantage” rules. In the case of liquor stores, there is no minimum distance they have to be from each other, although they must be at least 200 feet from schools and houses of worship.

Gothamist asked New Yorkers walking near New Amsterdam and Chelsea Cannabis Co. on a recent February afternoon how far apart they thought legal dispensaries should have to be from one another.

A couple of people said dispensaries should be “very far apart” because they weren’t fans of marijuana generally or how the stores change the character of the city.

Although the legal market is just getting off the ground, Lou Murphy, who was walking in Chelsea with a friend, said she’s already over it.

“ Oh, I just think it’s horrible,” she said. “It’s taking over the city.”

Others based their answers on a desire for convenience, or a neighborhood with a diverse mix of businesses.

Tom Allsup, 61, who consumes cannabis, said he thought one dispensary per block was reasonable. Asked what he thought of the 1,000-foot rule separating stores by more than three blocks, he said, “ Oh, that’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous. I mean, we get coffee on every block. If it’s legal, it’s legal.”

Atma Romero, who also described herself as “weed friendly,” agreed with the one-per-block idea. Romero noted that as more legal dispensaries open, they are unevenly distributed throughout the city. “There are some parts that don’t have none at all,” she said.

New Yorker Henry Gold said he generally wanted to see a diverse range of small businesses in each neighborhood, rather than one kind of shop, whether that’s pharmacies, pizza or weed.

Others were more wary of dispensaries, in particular, taking over. Allistair Aaron said he thought a minimum of five blocks apart was fair. “ Otherwise they all end up clustered in one area,” he said. “The whole area is just a weed dispensary.”

Aaron said his views were shaped by the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries in recent years, which have become less ubiquitous since a city crackdown began last year.

It seems he wasn’t the only one.

Angel Pereira, 40, who lives in Brooklyn, said he was concerned about “ delis and snack stores” that sell cannabis. “It looks like a regular store and kids run in there for snacks and chips,” he said. Legal dispensaries are supposed to check that customers are over 21 at the door, but Pereira said he was still wary of them and suggested they should be at least a mile apart.

The state Office of Cannabis Management is currently accepting public comments on the latest version of the “public convenience and advantage” rules.