It began with the April opening of one Norwalk dispensary, but national cannabis purveyor Shangri-La now plans a rapid expansion across Connecticut with a new grow site and five more dispensaries — three of which will be opening in the next three months.
It’s part of Shangri-La’s plan to become one of the state’s premier cannabis companies, general counsel Chris Bruneau said.
“We made a big bet on Connecticut, and it’s taking a little while to get up and running. But we expect Shangri-La to be one of the top three vertically integrated cannabis companies in Connecticut, along with Fine Fettle and C3 Industries,” Bruneau said.
With more retail dispensaries and an adult-use cannabis growing hub planned under its brand, Shangri-La will have more control over its supply chain, Bruneau said. It has invested about $15 million in projects across the Nutmeg State, in addition to the spending on a cultivation site in Stratford, which will grow cannabis for Shangri-La and supply its dispensaries and others in the state.
“Tomorrow, it will probably be another $500,000,” he said.
Its Plainville recreational dispensary at 349 New Britain Ave. will soft-open by the end of September, and another in Waterbury at 53 Interstate Lane is slated for opening in early November, Bruneau said.
That will bring Shangri-La up to four dispensaries statewide by year’s end. Its first Northeast region and Connecticut dispensary opened at 430 Main Ave. in Norwalk in April and a second in the city will open in mid-December at 75 Connecticut Ave. — several weeks later than it anticipated last month, Bruneau said.
The cannabis giant – with 13 incoming or open dispensaries across Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio – will take up more of the state’s legal market share with two more dispensaries in 2025. Construction is planned to begin in October for an East Hartford dispensary at 32 Main St., which is slated to open in the first quarter of 2025, as Shangri-La also scopes out the ideal location for a sixth dispensary that Bruneau said will open at some point in 2025.
Those six dispensaries will partly be supplied by Shangri-La’s incoming Stratford cultivation site, for which Shangri-La just came to a labor agreement with the Fairfield County Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents different contractor union locals, as required by Connecticut law.
“This ensures that local residents will be working on the project making area standard wages and benefits,” council President Dan McInerney, said in a statement.
The union collaboration for the Stratford grow site comes after Shangri-La reached a $145,000 settlement with employees represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 655 in Missouri, which “resolved 15 unfair labor practice charges covering dozens of unfair labor practice allegations,” according to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that protects employees from unfair labor practices.
With a $5 million property purchase, licensing and building costs, the cultivation site has cost Shangri-La $25 million already, Bruneau said. With construction expected to be completed in May, Shangri-La expects to supply cannabis across Connecticut by the end of the summer.
The Stratford site will help alleviate the cannabis supply shortage in Connecticut, he said, and supply dispensaries of all brands across the state. Providing cannabis just to Shangri-La dispensaries would be bad for business and bad for Connecticut’s cannabis market, Bruneau said.
“We’d never do that,” he said. “It’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea for the consumer and frankly, there’s no reason to do so. We will sell it to others and they’ll sell to us … so that consumers have more options. If consumers have more options and the prices drop to the consumer, people will stay in Connecticut and buy in Connecticut rather than going to neighboring states, which is happening now.”
Offering “varied retail options” as the Connecticut legal market develops will help draw customers to licensed dispensaries and away from the black-market, which will eventually lower the high costs of cannabis products in the Nutmeg State as its market matures, Bruneau said.
Shangri-La’s pending adult-use cannabis growing site will give it power in the Connecticut’s legal market, Bruneau said. It will join cultivators of adult-use and medication marijuana, including Advanced Grow Labs, Curaleaf; DXR Finance 3, formerly licensed as Theraplant; CTPharma, Rodeo Cannabis and Affinity in supplying the state.
Shangri-La owns the 40,000-square-foot property for the cultivation site at 305 Hathaway Drive in Stratford, along with the upcoming retail sites in East Hartford and on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk. It rents the locations in Plainville and Waterbury and at 430 Main Ave. in Norwalk.
