NEW HAVEN — Affinity Health & Wellness on Whalley Avenue has hired about 15 new employees and has done some interior innovations to prepare for retail cannabis sales, which are set to begin at 10 a.m. Jan. 10, the owner said.
The city’s medical marijuana store was one of nine existing dispensaries in Connecticut to receive approval to convert their establishments to a hybrid retail that serves both medical and recreational customers.
Customers over 21 years old will be able to buy marijuana flowers, edibles and vape cartridges, among other items, at the soon-to-be cannabis retail store.
“We are expecting an increase in traffic that week,” said Ray Pantalena, Affinity’s owner. “We’ve actually secured off-site parking for all of our employees to add additional parking where we are.”
The business will be the first of its kind in New Haven after the City Plan Commission approved a special permit for it in November.
The building at 1351 Whalley Ave. is not within 500 feet of a school or 1,000 feet of another cannabis outlet. The business takes up 3,200 square feet in a 10,000-square-foot store and is on a cannabis-allowed location map developed by the city in March.
“We’re all super excited here to be one of the first in the state,” Pantalena said. “It’s great for the city. It’s great for the state. We’ve been in operation for over three years, so we have a lot of experience in how to run a dispensary operation, so it should go very smoothly.”
Affinity Health & Wellness first opened in June 2019, and Pantalena said converting to a hybrid retail store seemed like “a natural transition.”
“We have many patients who have family members without medical cards that have requested to purchase, and once the legislature passed the new laws legalizing adult use, we decided to convert to what’s called a hybrid, which does both medical and adult use,” he said.
Pantalena said the business is in the process of training the new employees . New check-in windows and cash register windows were added as a part of interior renovations, he said.
Even though an increase in traffic is expected, Pantalena said all medical patients will be expedited with their own dedicated check-in and checkout windows.
After the state legalized adult-use cannabis in 2021, it originally aimed at the end of this year for retail stores to open but that has been delayed into 2023. Despite that, Pantalena said the process with the state was more “thorough and organized” than “complex.”
Affinity needed to develop a medical preservation plan and a new security plan before getting approvals from the state, according to Pantalena.
“The Department of Consumer Protection did a really good job,” Pantalena said. “They gave us the blueprint of what they were looking for. We’ve added more security to the facility and we have added quite a bit of infrastructure here.”
For now, customers will only be able to buy up to a quarter-ounce of cannabis at a time, with the purchase limits reviewed over time for supply and demand purposes.
The DCP also advised medical marijuana patients to purchase any necessary medication before Jan. 10 to avoid long lines and the increased traffic during the first few weeks.
Other locations that also received approvals for a hybrid license include Bluepoint Wellness of Connecticut in Branford; Still River Wellness in Torrington; Fine Fettle Dispensary in Newington, Stamford and Willimantic; The Botanist in Danbury and Montville; and Willow Brook Wellness in Meriden.
More than 40 cannabis businesses have received provisional licenses from the state to operate in the recreational-use market, and they’re expected to open over the course of 2023. About 100 businesses are in various stages of the licensing process, according to the DCP.
H/T: www.nhregister.com
