MILFORD — The city’s last medical marijuana dispensary is leaving for a location up the road in Orange, a former TD Bank branch with a drive-thru window.
Southern CT Wellness & Healing will move from 318 New Haven Ave. to 175 Boston Post Road in Orange within the next few months, where it will be known as Rise Dispensary and owned by Green Thumb Industries of Chicago. Construction workers at the site “are doing the tenant fit-out right now,” said Jack Demirjian, Orange zoning enforcement officer.
The move leaves Milford without a medical or recreational dispensary, according to the list available at the Connecticut State Department of Consumer Protection. That state list though is out of date. It still records Curaleaf Milford at 255 West River St., but Curaleaf moved to Manchester in July, according to its website and a receptionist who answered the telephone there on Wednesday.
The lack of a medicinal dispensary, while likely not much more than an inconvenience to most medicinal users, is occurring statewide because many municipalities will not allow recreational dispensaries, said Julien Debelle Duplan, owner of EZmedcard, an online business that certifies patients for medical marijuana usage.
Most medical dispensaries “are going to cities that allow for medical and recreational marijuana because they don’t want to be limited to just medical sales,” Duplan said Wednesday. “Milford is going to lose tax revenue at the end of the day. Other than that, patients are just going to have to travel a little bit further.”
That doesn’t appear to be a possible motivation for Southern CT, but it was for Curaleaf. Orange does not allow recreational sales. Orange zoning regulations only allow for the one, medicinal sales point that Southern will fill, Demirjian said. The Orange Plan and Zoning Commission voted 3-2 to approve the use of the bank building as a dispensary on Jan. 3, according to the meeting’s minutes.
Workers at Southern CT’s Milford office, which displayed a sign announcing the move to Orange, referred comment on it to their corporate office in Chicago. The company did not respond to email or telephone calls.
Curaleaf, located in Manchester at 240 Buckland St., opened for medical sales in July but began selling adult-use cannabis in August, roughly two miles from an existing Fine Fettle recreational dispensary on Hale Road in Manchester. Fine Fettle also operates hybrid-use dispensaries in Newington, Stamford, and Willimantic, while Curaleaf has other mixed-use outlets in Hartford, Groton, Stamford and Weatogue.
Southern CT paid $4,940 in taxes for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, according to the Milford Tax Collector’s Office.
Milford has designated one area of the city for recreational use of pot, a sidewalk listed as 0 Roses Mill Road, adjacent to the side entrance to Barnes and Noble at 1375 Boston Post Road. The area is several yards away from the Post Road. The designation was announced in October 2021.
Milford, because of its population size, is required to designate an area where the public can consume cannabis outdoors.
H/T: CTpost.com
You can view the whole article at this link.
