Whately Select Board member Frederick Orloski, Northampton attorney Richard M. Evans and Harvest Inc. National Director of Real Estate and Business Development Joseph Kachuroi at a community outreach meeting held on the sale floor of Sturbridge Yankee Peddlar at 424 State Road in Whately.
WHATELY — A dozen people formed a circle in the middle of Sturbridge Yankee Peddlar’s sales floor at 424 State Road last week for an obligatory community outreach meeting called by Arizona cannabis company Harvest Inc., which is interested in opening a marijuana dispensary on the site.
Joseph Kachuroi, Harvest’s national director of real estate and business development, Northampton attorney Richard M. Evans, and consultant Ezra Parzybok explained the idea to a mix of residents and town officials at the daytime meeting.
Kachuroi explained the dispensary would be run by ToroVerde Massachusetts Corporation III, an entity of Harvest. He said the plan is to invest $100,000 to $150,000 on cameras (with motion detection) that stores data for three months and security guards. He also said there will be a vault on the site and no one will be able to make it past the lobby with showing identification to prove they are 21 or older.
“You have to be buzzed in to the dispensary area. You cannot just walk in,” he said. He said there will be no product in the lobby. Kachuroi also said there is a limit to how much marijuana a person can buy, and each purchase is entered into a state database.
He explained Harvest grows 42 to 60 strains. The hope is to cultivate at Pioneer Gardens at 198 Mill Village Road in Deerfield. At a Deerfield Selectboard meeting last Wednesday evening, Evans explained Harvest will soon file a special permit and site plan approval application with the town. He also said there will be “an open house, so to speak” at 198 Mill Village Road at 10 a.m. on Nov. 10. He told Selectboard members he and others affiliated with Harvest will likely be back in November to ask the Selectboard to consider sponsoring an amendment to the town’s zoning bylaws to allow product manufacturing at cultivation facility.
At Sturbridge Yankee Peddlar, a few residents seemed to have concerns over marijuana use and regulation.
“If you’re asking if people will smoke and eat a bag of Cheetos, the answer is yes,” Kachuroi said. “That’s never going to go away.”
He said no paraphernalia (pipes, rolling papers, bongs) will be sold at the dispensary, which he hopes will open within a year.
Cannabis consultant Ezra Parzybok said 3 percent of gross revenue will go to the town if the dispensary opens.
Massachusetts voters opted on Nov. 8, 2016, to legalize recreational adult use of marijuana, and related growing and selling of pot and related products.
“For 40 years, I advocated for the abolition of criminal penalties for marijuana. And we won,” Evans told The Recorder after the meeting. “Why do I advocate for not arresting people for pot? It’s about freedom. I don’t think people ought to be arrested for pot.”
Kachuroi said marijuana has healing and medicinal properties. He explained about 4.5 to 6 percent of people buy medical marijuana, and that number increases to 12 to 15 percent for recreational pot.
Whately Town Administrator Brian Domina, Police Chief James A. Sevigne Jr. and Selectboard member Frederick Orloski were present for the meeting, as well as resident Suzanne Arnopolin, who expressed disappointment that the meeting was held inside a store, where it was difficult to find.
“Look at this. This is kind of pitiful,” she said, prompting Parzybok to say this was the most people he had ever seen at a community outreach meeting.
After the meeting ended, Arnopolin told The Recorder he has concerns about the smells, lighting and noise that may come from a dispensary. She said her home abuts another potential operation, Bloom Market Garden Inc. on Christian Lane.
“It just feels like it’s all coming so fast,” she said about the marijuana industry in town, adding that she has previously used medical pot, with mixed results, for anxiety.
Her biggest issue with the community outreach meeting was its location and lack of outdoor notification that it was being held inside.
“I feel disappointed in the town and the … potential store owners of this, because I think this is an important meeting and it took me 45 minutes to find and I live five minutes away,” Arnopolin said. “I think that that’s sort of lame. Maybe I’m not the only one who was looking for it.”
Evans defended the decision to hold the meeting at Sturbridge Yankee Peddlar.
“It seemed to me like a nice idea to have it here — as a way to let people see what the space is,” he said.