Green & Foster also is seeking a zoning change today from the City Council’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks & Building Standards for a building at Milwaukee and Ashland avenues to open a retail marijuana store.
Green & Bransford is scheduled to host a community meeting at 6 p.m. today to discuss its plans to open a dispensary at 212 E. Ontario St. in Streeterville, according to an email sent to residents of the 42nd Ward by Ald. Brendan Reilly.
The moves show that applicants who won the lotteries for 185 dispensary licenses last summer are pushing forward with plans for retail stores, even though the state has yet to issue any licenses. A Cook County judge issued a stay last year in a challenge to the state’s application procedures that has prevented the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation from formally issuing the licenses. The state department does not issue licenses until retail stores have passed final inspection and are open for business.
“Some are trying to move ahead and hoping for the best (and) some are sitting back, waiting to see what happens in court,” says Bryan Zises, co-owner of Dispensary 33, who worked with several applicant groups that won licenses, such as Green & Foster and Green & Bransford. “It’s a question of their appetites for risk.”
New license applications in the city of Chicago appear to be moving through the zoning process more quickly than the initial round of petitions by existing medical-dispensary owners, who were grandfathered into recreational marijuana and received an additional license for each license they already had.
