Thomas Keenan, (standing, right) CEO of Cannabis Connection Inc., held a community outreach meeting last year to preview the upcoming recreational marijuana shop. (Photo by Peter Currier)
WESTFIELD- The city’s presumed first marijuana dispensary is still awaiting notice from the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) that its application is sufficiently complete.
Cannabis Connection, which is located at 4o Westfield Industrial Park, has submitted an application for a provisional license to the CCC, but are awaiting judgement from the regulatory body after submitting additional information.
Cannabis Connection CEO Thomas Keenan said that the CCC had some minor requests for information before the application could be considered complete. He did not clarify what the requests were, but said that he submitted the additional information on Sept. 4.
“Assuming that our application will be considered ‘complete’ after the CCC reviews our latest responses, the CCC will have 90 days to grant a Provisional License, which are granted at meetings of the CCC,” said Keenan. He noted that the next scheduled CCC meeting is set to take place on Oct. 10 at Western New England University.
“As I understand it, during this 90 days the CCC does background checks and notifies the city that our application was submitted,” Keenan added.
The Cannabis Connection Building at 40 Westfield Industrial Park. (Photo by Peter Currier)
After the license is obtained, the CCC will conduct inspections of the building and review the plans for security and general operation of the business. If the CCC gives approval following that inspection, another inspection will determine if they will grant a final license, which would be done at the following CCC meeting.
“If they approve us at that meeting, I believe we’ll be allowed to get inventory in and then they do one last inspection before we can commence operations,” said Keenan.
Keenan’s original timeline for opening Cannabis Connection had the planned opening of the shop taking place this fall. As of now, Keenan said he estimates that the grand opening will take place at the beginning of 2020. He did note that it could happen sooner or later than that, but his conversations with other successful licensees indicated that it would take about three months to open following the granting of the provisional license.
Keenan added that they will be hosting a job fair sometime this fall. There are no dates set.
As of Friday, the CCC has approved 79 final licenses for adult use marijuana dispensaries in Massachusetts, with 331 applications are pending throughout the state.
