There is no leaf on The Rock.
More than a year after New York issued its first licenses for legal pot peddlers to set up shop, Staten Island is the only borough in NYC without a recreational dispensary, killing the buzz for would-be entrepreneurs and users alike.
“I’m disappointed,” said David Sutherland, who was awarded a license in July but still hasn’t found a storefront where he can legally sell sticky icky. “We are part of the five boroughs. We should have the same opportunities.”
A major hurdle for many budding cannabis sellers has been the legal red tape that has delayed openings for all licensed pot shops across the state for months.
But in the city’s most conservative borough, landlords also have been reluctant to rent to dispensaries, industry experts and licensees said.
“If you took a poll, I’d bet most Staten Islanders do not want pot shops, legal or not,” US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) told The Post.
“I think this is an area where we’d be happy to remain the forgotten borough and continue to urge the city to crack down on illegal operations.”
Michael Heitmann, a business lawyer with expertise in the cannabis industry, suggested landlords on the island likely see renting to a legal dispensary as a bummer partly because it’s unclear whether the law-abiding tenants can compete with the estimated 1,500-plus illicit pot shops still plaguing city.
“You have New York allowing all of these illegal pot shops, and then you have a legal business coming in and wants to be your tenant,” he said. “I’d be advising my client, ‘I don’t know if they can make it.’”
Cannabis sale licensee Leonard Manning, who hopes to finally open his dispensary, The Weed Shoppe, in March, said he reached out to landlords and management companies for roughly 100 properties, including at major strip malls, before one finally gave him and his partner a lease for a Tottenville storefront.
“We were out there all day,” Manning, 73, said, adding that many commercial property owners across the borough have been reluctant to join in the green rush over the “the element” they fear shops like his will attract to their properties.
“They think it’ll affect their customers and make people not want to come there, not want the kids around,” he said.
Lawsuits challenging the Hochul administration’s problem-plagued cannabis program also wound up freezing the state’s ability to issue licenses or allowing new dispensaries to begin selling.
So far, just 15 Big Apple pot operations are currently up and running.
In August, four disabled army vets filed a discrimination lawsuit alleging the state illegally favored applicants convicted on marijuana charges when awarding licenses to sell legal weed over others.
Albany Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bryant, agreeing with the outraged vets, issued an injunction barring state regulators from awarding any new licenses or allowing pot shops to open.
The state’s Cannabis Control Board in November settled both the vets’ lawsuit and a similar case brought in March, but some say suits have had lasting effects on their ability to get their businesses off the ground.
“Before August 7… we were ready to go, we had had the money lined up,” said one Staten Island cannabis licensee. “As soon as we got sued, people were like, ‘I don’t really know about this program anymore. I’m afraid to put my 500 grand into this program that may be gonna get sued again.'”
A spokesman for the Office of Cannabis Management said that the borough’s first dispensary is expected to open in January.
