Thomas Breen photo
The entrance to 45 Church St.: Pot shop coming soon?
A long-vacant Classical Revival former bank building at Church and Crown streets could have a new life — as a medical and recreational cannabis dispensary.
According to the City Plan Commission’s website, on June 21, Dharini Patel of the Bensalem, Penn.-based company Divine 1 LLC and landlord David Kuperberg of the New York-based 45 Cooper Associates LLC submitted site plan and special permit applications to open up a new cannabis retailer at 45 Church St.
Thomas Breen file photos
That’s the 1907-built Classical Revival bank building that used to be the headquarters of the Connecticut Savings Bank, and that has sat vacant for years. Kuperberg’s company bought it for $1.55 million in 2016.
The applications state that Patel is a trained chemist who currently works as a “Quality Control manager” with Frontida Biopharm in Philadelphia and as project manager at Laurel, Maryland-based medical marijuana dispensary called Blu Pharms. They also state that Patel recently received approval to open an adult-use cannabis dispensary in New York “and is in the process of securing property with her team.”
City Plan Department Planner Esther Rose-Wilen told the Independent that these site plan and special permit applications for 45 Church St. are still under review by her office, and are in the process of being noticed so that they can appear on the agenda for the City Plan Commission’s next meeting on July 19.
According to the special permit application, the applicant, Patel’s company, plans to rent 6,500 square feet on the vacant commercial building’s first floor for the sake of setting up a “hybrid cannabis retailer which allows the sale of both medical marijuana and adult use products.” The remaining roughly 14,000 square feet of the building will not be rented during the term of the applicant’s lease.
The 45 Church St. application states that the site meets the criteria laid out in the city’s zoning regulations for where a cannabis retailer can go, including that its entrance is more than 500 feet from the property line of any elementary or secondary school and it is not within 1,500 feet of another cannabis establishment.
“The applicant is a knowledgeable operator and is well versed in both local and state regulations pertaining to such facilities,” the application reads. “Dharini Patel is a trained chemist, with significant experience in quality assurance and quality control protocols, and with drafting standard operating procedures to ensure consistency throughout all aspects of operations.” In her current role at a Maryland-based medical marijuana dispensary “she oversees and supervises all functions including human resources, payroll, and marketing in order to grow the company.”
The accompanying site plan application states that the project includes renovating the interior of the existing three-story building. “No structures are proposed. Exterior site activities are solely limited to ADA improvements by the Crown Street building entrance.”
Those Roman Numerals add up to "420," I think.
Patel’s and Kuperberg’s Church Street cannabis plan isn’t the only proposed pot shop that could be coming to New Haven soon. Nor is it the only one likely to appear on the July 19 City Plan Commission agenda.
A Springfield, Mass.-based cannabis company called INSA had special permit and site plan applications on the commission’s June 21 agenda to open a new cannabis dispensary at the former Long Wharf Theatre site at 222 Sargent Dr. Affinity Health & Wellness had a separate special permit application on that same commission agenda to open up a separate new cannabis dispensary at a former diner building at 420 Middletown Ave. Commissioners tabled both INSA’s and Affinity’s cannabis applications during the June meeting with plans to pick the matters up for a public hearing, deliberations, and a potential vote at a future date.
All the while, Affinity has been running the city’s only up-and-running recreational cannabis dispensary so far on Whalley Avenue since early January and smoke shops have been exploding in popularity downtown in the wake of the state’s recent legalization of adult-use recreational pot.
Truly the worst idea possible.