Recreational marijuana businesses have proliferated so rapidly in some of Denver’s poorer neighborhoods during the past two years that city officials are exploring ways to disperse future growth more evenly.

Neighborhood residents and business leaders say they’ve been concerned since the beginning that Colorado’s new marijuana industry would settle into their backyards and that communities of color and lower incomes would see a disproportionate share of those businesses.

Odors from the pot grows and fears of rising crime and youth marijuana usage top the neighborhood concerns. There have been persistent complaints about unlocked trash bins — by law they are supposed to be padlocked when not in use — and vagrants picking through them for marijuana remnants.