Alex Silecchia, left, a marijuana “budtender,” also known as a sales associate, serves a customer at Statis Cannabis Company dispensary in the Bronx on Friday, Sept. 29, 2023.
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Community Board 11 is scheduled to deliberate on a new cannabis player in the East Bronx at its Economic Development Committee meeting tonight.
Freshly Baked NYC — a legal conditional adult-use retail dispensary (CAURD) license holder with a Queens delivery location but without a current physical storefront — has applied to set up shop at 2151-2154 White Plains Road in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx. According to the committee agenda, CB11 members will deliberate on the dispensary’s application at Wednesday night’s hybrid meeting.
David Nicponski, the CEO and co-founder of Freshly Baked NYC, told the Bronx Times that in the months since he received his CAURD license on April 3 he’s been working to find a retail space that both adheres to legislative regulations and will be good for business. But that process, he said, has been arduous.
“Finding a storefront has been a very laborious and difficult process,” Nicponski said.
The Bronx has lagged behind other boroughs since the New York State Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) announced its first round of CAURD licenses almost a year ago — a restorative justice program that is meant to provide entrepreneurial opportunities in the legal cannabis industry to individuals who have been impacted by the over-policing of marijuana. That includes people like Nicponski — who said he was “harass(ed)” by the police and arrested multiple times for cannabis possession as a teenager in upstate New York.
Part of this disparity in the industry can be attributed to the struggles CAURD holders have had navigating the real estate side of the business. Those challenges include examining vacant commercial spaces to operate, complying with zoning requirements and…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply