Council to review 5 dispensary ‘finalists’
And then there were five.
The competition to grab the brass ring of the Sonoma cannabis dispensary challenge will enter its next phase this week when the five finalists for the coveted Commercial Cannabis Business license go before the Sonoma City Council for approval.
In addition to eventually awarding one license for a storefront dispensary, the city may also award one license for a "non-store front retail commercial cannabis business," as allowed for under the city's cannabis ordinance.
The five applicant finalists will, in alphabetical order, appear before the City Council at its Wednesday, May 27 meeting to present their case.
Their selection as finalists was made from the 10 applicants by the Proposal Review Committee which includes Sonoma Planning Director David Storer, Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez, and Mark Bodenhamer, CEO of the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce. The review committee scored each applicant based on a series of criteria city officials are seeking from the licence holder.
Storer said the May 27 meeting would signal the beginning of the next phase – should the City Council confirm the eligible list, the top applicants will be given 45 days to secure an allowable location as part of Phase 2.
Coastal Retail Sonoma finished with 2,453 points of a possible 2,500. Its local tip of the spear is 5-year Sonoma Valley resident Jordan Kivelstadt, who has wine-related businesses in the Valley and recently purchased the former Schellville Grill, now called Kivelstadt Cellars Wine Garden & Eatery (yet to be opened due to the shutdown).
His entree to the world of cannabis came through a business partner, Julian Michalowski, who leads Coastal, a Central Coast cannabis retailer that has dispensaries, manufacturing and delivery services in Santa Barbara, Lompoc and San Luis Obispo.
'Our flagship dispensary is in downtown Santa Barbara,' said Coastal's Devon Warlow, 'and we see Sonoma as a very similar community – with an established wine industry that encourages a healthy active lifestyle, and one which has rallied together during natural disasters.' In 2017 — the same year fires devastated Sonoma Valley — wildfires, and then floods, overwhelmed the coastal town of Santa Barbara, especially its Montecito neighborhoods.
'Part of Coastal's ethos is understanding the community,' said Kivelstadt, 'and I'm impressed with the quality of their dispensaries, their team and message.' He would be the local managing partner for Coastal Retail Sonoma, which he said had vowed to put 'a million dollars back into the community in the first five years' of operation.
The Lighthouse Sonoma (2,390) is a Southern California operation seeking a license to open for business in Sonoma. Lighthouse already has a specific location in mind: the Four Corners Service station at Broadway and Napa Road, across from the Broadway Market.
Lighthouse was founded as 'the first dispensary in the lower Coachella Valley' in 2018 by commercial realtor Joseph Rubin, and it has since opened its flagship store in Palm Springs, a prototype for its dispensaries to come.
'We are an open retail cannabis environment,' said operating officer Brad Davis, a former executive at Disney Online. 'It is a true retail experience, not a medical cannabis (store) that was converted to adult use.' He promises a lot of glass, product displays, and a 'consultantive sales technique' that emphasizes education. Orders are input into an iPad station, the product is 'fulfilled in a secure backroom environment,' and customers pick up their order on their way out.
'I reached out to Lighthouse,' said Melanie King, a Lighthouse investor and a Sonoma cannabis community member for over dozen years. 'As event director at CannaCraft, in my tenure I worked with every dispensary in the state, and got to know the operators pretty well. When the application came up, Lighthouse was the only one I reached out to. That's because I live here, I raised my kids here, and if there's going to be a dispensary in Sonoma it's got to meet my muster, which is not easy.'
Matanzas Alliance (2,391) pulls in former Sonoma City Councilmember Ken Brown and his wife, Jewel Mathieson, and would operate its Sonoma dispensary under their business name Justice Grown, It was formed by social-equity attorneys Jon Loevy and Mike Kanovitz of Chicago, and holds cannabis licenses in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Utah, as well as California.
But its local connections are several. As well as Brown and Mathieson, they include co-founders Barry Wood and Robert Jacob of Peace in Medicine, one of the early dispensaries in Santa Rosa; and former Sonoma resident Shivawn Brady. Other members of the Matanzas Alliance are also Sonoma County cannabis advocates who are 'passionate about the therapeutic potential for cannabis,' said Brady.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: