-January 31,2020-
The community of Lemoore appears ready to offer a full-on embrace of the cannabis business with 4 projects now in the works including the Valley’s first pot cafe or cannabis bar -officially called a “consumption center.”
Did you hear this one – 2 guys walk into a pot bar and ask the budtender for a nightcap- a dose of pot – not to blow their mind but put them into a restful sleep. They call an Uber to carry them home.
That’s not much of a joke but it may be the future in Lemoore California where you can already party-down by surfing 100 miles from the ocean.
Now they are looking at new pot cafe to be operated by Grover Beach-based Natural Healing Center later this year – what would be the first in the Valley. That will require approval from the City Council at their Feb 4 meeting.Natural Healing Center already has 3 locations on the Central Coast for their walk-in dispensaries and one dispensary store under construction now in Lemoore.
Lemoore has another dispensary approved and under construction as well, Valley Pure. Besides those three projects all approved – a cannabis related project, Wellsona got the green light last fall – a 14 acres playground that includes a marijuana cultivation component that could mean an estimated $220,000 in tax revenue City Manager Nate Olson has estimated.He likens the approach of the project to nearby Surf Ranch.Wellsona will include guided tours, an event center and also offer pot delivered to your front door.
But it’s the plan to open a ‘consumption cafe’ in this small town that has people talking – intrigued with idea. There are not many around yet.The first café where patrons can smoke cannabis opened in West Hollywood just last October. Now a few are starting up including one in Berkeley.
Some urban areas in Valley have vowed to keep retail pot stores or pot smoke-filled cafes outside their city limits like Visalia and Fresno. That has prompted the industry to launch their stores and manufacturing facilities in smaller towns who welcome them – like Woodlake where Valley Pure was launched. County jurisdictions including Fresno,Tulare and Kings have also declined to allow the projects. Now Farmersville and Lindsay have joined the chorus.Sources says Visalia may rethink their opposition sometime soon.
The migration of retail marijuana entrepreneurs from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley follows the path of the popular craft beer operations in the past few years including Paso Robles based BarrelHouse,who has now launched taprooms in the Valley opening in Visalia and soon in Fresno. Now another yummy product, premium ice cream is headed down the same path from SLO to Visalia and soon Sacramento -Doc Bernstein’s.
Natural Healing Center, who wants open that first pot cafe, started up in Grover Beach- a small city that decided not to hesitate to attract this type of business. Grover Beach cannabis retailer Natural Healing Center is owned by longtime medical marijuana businessman Helios Dayspring. He spent millions to start up his vertically integrated operation simultaneously planting marijuana farms in the county including along Los Osos Valley Rd.
Likewise with Valley-based Greenbrier Holdings who has Central Coast growing operations – 18 acres of greenhouse cultivation in partnership with Valley Crest and Ceres Farms in Santa Barbara and has now constructed a new 20,000sf processing plant in the Valley – in Parlier. It is expected to employ 50.
Cities in the Valley are watching the Santa Barbara area, the largest pot cultivation county in the state now. Just announced -the cannabis industry in Santa Barbara County continues to generate more money than expected bringing in $2.86 million in tax revenue in the last quarter.
Back in the Valley expansion has also been from within at Valley Pure with partners Wes Hardin and Tony Caudle, now opening a second location in Farmersville after the success of their first operation in Woodlake. The Farmersville store is larger, right off 198- close enough to the big city of Visalia to attract some of that business. Now Farmersville has decided to allow three dispensaries in town including the Vally Pure store. Also open or coming soon is locally owned Token Farms and locally owned Plantinum Connection- all off of 198.
But Valley Pure’s Hardin and Caudle aren’t worried about the increase in dispensaries they told the press the other day.
“It makes us happy because we know we laid the groundwork,” Hardin said. Besides a new store in Lemoore, Valley Pure plans a location in Lindsay as well.