Up next at the former Long Wharf Theatre (clockwise from top left): INSA model smoking INSA pre-rolled joint; theater's former sign on Sargent Dr.; INSA cannabis chocolates; theater's former home in the Food Terminal.
The main stage of the ex-Long Wharf Theatre on Sargent Drive could see cannabis curious customers shopping for weed chocolates and pre-rolled joints by as early as December — according to a newly disclosed 10-year dispensary lease.
That planned regional-theater-to-pot-shop conversion came into clearer focus Tuesday night during the latest Board of Alders Legislation Committee meeting, which was held in-person in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
The sole agenda item for the meeting was a proposed city zoning update that would permit adult-use cannabis businesses like dispensaries in the BE zone, or Business E‑Wholesale Distribution District.
As city Deputy Director of Zoning Nathaniel Hougrand explained to the committee alders Tuesday, this requested update is really just to fix an inadvertent omission from the city-proposed cannabis zoning regulations that the alders amended and approved last August.
Thomas Breen photo
What the ex-LWT home looks like now.
Warning: This explanation is kind of convoluted, and hinges on a few double negatives. And will be mercilessly explained in detail below.
But the upshot is: According to a board member and a lawyer representing the New Haven Food Terminal, that Sargent Drive property owner has signed a new 10-year lease with a Springfield, Mass.-based cannabis company called INSA. Pending the receipt of remaining needed city and state approvals, INSA plans to open up a cannabis dispensary in the former Long Wharf Theatre site at 222 Sargent Dr. That cannabis dispensary will be located in the main stage area of the ex-theater home (and not in the former Stage II area) now that the regional theater has moved into itinerancy. The dispensary could open as early as this December.
Tuesday’s meeting came roughly 11 months after representatives from the Food Terminal and INSA testified to the Legislation Committee in support of the city allowing cannabis businesses to operate on Long Wharf. At that meeting nearly a year ago, the Food Terminal and INSA representatives told the alders that they were even then eyeing opening a cannabis dispensary at the ex-theater site. According to Tuesday’s meeting, those plans are not just on track — but appear to have moved ahead quite a bit, given that the landlord and prospective tenant have signed a 10-year lease that is conditioned upon remaining regulatory approvals, according to the landlord.
Representatives from INSA did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.
Kaitlyn Krasselt, a spokesperson for the state Department of Consumer Protection, told the Independent on Thursday that INSA has a “provisional license as a hybrid retailer that was submitted as an equity joint venture that was approved by the Social Equity Council.” She added that, prior to opening, they will have to submit a final license application. They will also need to be inspected by the Department of Consumer Protection before they can open.
"This Is More Of A Corrective Thing"
Zoning director Nate Hougrand on Tuesday.
OK, first the kind of winding explanation of the actual zoning-update proposal before the committee alders on Tuesday.
During the alders’ initial approval process for the zoning regs governing where cannabis business can be located around town, Hougrand said, the alders removed the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan area from a list of sections of the city where cannabis businesses should be prohibited. That removal of a prohibition, however, did not affirmatively state that such cannabis businesses are indeed allowed in the BE area, which covers a small stretch of Long Wharf and an area by Union Station.
Hougrand noted that the area covered by the Hill to Downtown Plan, however, is still included on the the city’s cannabis-business-prohibition list. So New Haven is not and will not any time soon allow cannabis businesses at or next to Union Station. The city would, however, like to allow cannabis businesses to operate in the part of the BE zone on Long Wharf that does not overlap with the Hill to Downtown Plan.
And the one small area that is in the BE zone but that is not in the Hill to Downtown Plan area is the Food Terminal complex on Sargent Drive.
“This is more of a corrective thing as a result of the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan being removed from the original approval,” Hougrand said about the city’s BE-including cannabis zoning proposal.
Why does any of this really matter?
Mark Sklarz and Val Capobianco, the only two members of the public to speak up during Tuesday’s Legislation Committee meeting, explained through their testimony why such a BE inclusion is so consequential — and what is soon coming down the pike for a venue that for decades was the home to a beloved regional theater.
"We've Signed A Lease"
Sklarz and Capobianco testify at Tuesday's committee hearing.
The now-blank former Long Wharf Theatre sign on Sargent.
Peeking through the front windows at the now ex-theater lobby of 222 Sargent.
Sklarz is an attorney representing the New Haven Food Terminal, a mostly commercial tenant-owned collection of properties at 200 – 400 Sargent Dr. that includes Lamberti’s Italian Sausage, Carl’s Boned Chicken, and Brazi’s Italian Restaurant. Capobianco, who owns and runs Brazi’s, is on the Food Terminal’s board.
On Tuesday night, Sklarz and Capobianco told the committee alders that the Food Terminal has lined up a new cannabis dispensary business that plans to open at Long Wharf Theatre’s former home at 222 Sargent Dr.
“We have a tenant,” Sklarz said. “We’ve actually signed a lease, condition on proper approvals of the Board of Alders and also” the Board of Zoning Appeals and the City Plan Commission with respect to the special permit needed to open a cannabis retailer in New Haven. (Right now, only one such business has opened in the city so far, Affinity Health & Wellness on Whalley Avenue.)
Sklarz urged the alders to sign off on the BE zone’s inclusion in New Haven’s zoning regs governing where cannabis businesses can operate. “We are relying on” the newly lined up cannabis retailer “to replace the income we’ve lost” from Long Wharf Theatre moving out and into itinerancy, he said.
Soon thereafter, the committee alders unanimously recommended approval of the cannabis zoning law update. That proposal now heads to the full Board of Alders for a final vote.
Capobianco and Sklarz.
After the committee meeting ended, Sklarz and Capobianco stuck around to answer more questions from this reporter about the new dispensary lease.
Sklarz said that the Food Terminal has signed a 10-year lease with INSA for the former main stage area at the former Long Wharf Theatre at 222 Sargent. He stressed that that lease is contingent upon the Food Terminal and INSA getting its remaining needed city and state approvals to open such a business at that location.
He added that the city’s and the alders’ inadvertent omission of the BE zone from the cannabis zoning regs has caused roughly three months of delays for the dispensary’s plans to open at the ex-theater.
And he said that, at least from the landlord’s perspective, the dispensary could be able to move in to the ex-theater site as early as December.
This is a great idea. What better enterprise to plant into the gutted remnants of a great local creative center that communicated with the world than an odorous dispensary of recreational drugs? It can take its place alongside the great methadone clinics that brighten up so many New Haven neighborhoods. I spend a lot of time in NYC, and the proliferation of weed dispensaries, legal, and now, illegal has certainly improved the quality of life and air, not to mention the fuzzy behaviors of the happy pot smokers. So much nicer than the K2, bath-salts, fentanyl, and old-school crack, meth and horse, oh, and re-purposed methadone. Hats off, kudos to the City of New Haven folks for their creative approach to re-purposing a space.