CENTRAL LAKE – Kelly Young’s plan to open a cannabis store in her hometown first germinated after a General Dollar outlet opened in the village limits and the profits of the grocery store his family could.
“In 2017, just as we were ready to make a profit, we were missing $ 10,000, they opened up and crushed us,” said Young, of the Village Market store on Old State Road.
On Wednesday, it will host the soft opening of Torch Cannabis Co., Antrim County’s first recreational marijuana retailer. And the only shop of this type allowed within the boundaries of the village.
“I got a medical card in 2008, studied state and federal law, paid attention to the cannabis market, and went to almost every town hall meeting,” Young said. “Opening up any new business is hard work and I was ready for it.”
When Michigan legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, Young was already a professional.
He had run a mobile CBD oil extraction business with a 39-foot fifth wheel that he drove up and down the west coast.
After former President Donald Trump signed the 2018 agricultural law, which legalizes hemp, Young said he learned how to grow the plant in the Michigan climate on his own land.
He developed his own recipes for topical cannabis-infused creams, prepared lots of samples in his kitchen, and sold his house to help fund Torch Cannabis.
“Ready,” however, turned out to mean much more to Young than renovating a closed butcher shop on Old State Road, moving to the upstairs apartment, and following all the laws and regulations of the Marijuana Regulatory Agency. Michigan.
Young said she felt ready to sell cannabis to customers; for which she was unprepared were the unforeseen local, regional, and even national legal messes.
“Trump was tweeting about it, the election drew a lot of attention to the people and I just wanted to open my business, serve customers and help people,” Young said.
Young was successful in getting a proposal in the November 2020 vote that, if approved by locals, would allow a recreational marijuana retailer in the village.
Antrim County then held the presidential election.
“So the vote came and we had a draw,” Young said, on the initial bill of the marijuana ordinance. “And that’s when this whole era of things started.”
The first event of that “era of things,” as Young refers to the controversy over the results of the 2020 Antrim County election, began with a manual counting of ballots cast by village voters.
The count showed that the ordinance did not end in a tie, but was passed by a single vote: 262 to 261.
Young said she was excited, but three weeks later, another unexpected turn of events.
An area voter, Bill Bailey, filed a lawsuit accusing Antrim County of electoral fraud, the lawsuit referring to the approval of the town’s marijuana ordinance. This lawsuit quickly dragged the rural county into a national election disinformation campaign that Trump opponents now refer to as “The Big Lie.”
“I understand we’re in a very red county and I’ve always fallen on both sides of the spectrum,” Young said, about his own political leanings. “But what I don’t understand is that we, as taxpayers, are paying for Mr. Bailey’s dissatisfaction with my openness.”
Bailey did not return a request for comment made through his attorney, Matthew DePerno.
Records show he is registered to vote in Central Lake Township, and only voters registered in the town of Central Lake were eligible to vote for the marijuana ordinance.
The fact that Bailey had not been able to vote on the issue of the marijuana ballot did not arise until the case was already ongoing. But in May, a circuit court judge dismissed the case, and Bailey appealed and the Michigan Court of Appeals has yet to be assessed.
Antrim County Secretary Sheryl Guy said Thursday that the county has so far spent about $ 90,000 in legal fees to defend itself from the lawsuit.
Young said Bailey was a regular customer at his family’s grocery store, that his exchanges with him were superficial but enjoyable, that they never talked about marijuana, and so the demand was a surprise.
“We never had any problems, not one,” he said.
Also a surprise: last-minute denial of Young’s permit application, after he paid the $ 2,500 non-refundable fee, by officials who said his building was too close to the school local secondary by 79 feet.
Then something else unexpected. Green Pharma, a larger retailer, had also applied for the village’s only permit, and rumors soon spread about who in the village owned a property and was trying to sell to make room for the competing applicant.
Daniel Till, the company’s head of business development, did not return a call for comment.
“I knew the grocery store was cut off and my building was even further away from the school, so I thought it was fine,” Young said of a school’s 1,000-foot state standard, used by officials. in the case of a municipality. he declared no setbacks.
The town of Mancelona, for example, which is also in County Antrim, has a 100-foot rule, according to its ordinance.
The youths hired lawyers, sued the village in Circuit Court 13 and in July the case was settled out of court.
Records show that the village agreed to use the radius method, rather than the straight line method, when measuring the distance from the dispensary to the school, putting Young’s building out of the mishap.
“Voters voted in favor of that in 2020,” village president Rob Tyler said. “I think it’s great to have a local person, who invests in the village, instead of going into a big conglomerate.”
Tyler said Young attended a board meeting where the discussion focused on the deteriorating state of the three signs “Welcome to the people of Central Lake.” He then paid $ 3,000 for an artist to repaint and repair them.
“He’s pretty humble, so he doesn’t talk much about that kind of thing,” Tyler said.
Young said in mediation that he agreed to shorten the opening hours of his store and not allow it to go outside, which he said he planned to do anyway.
Central Lake Police Chief Scott Barrett said retailing marijuana is a novelty for the people and he was aware of the rule of not wandering.
“This is unexplored territory for us,” Barrett said. “Before we had two part-time officers plus me, but now I’m a one-man band. I’m crossing my fingers so that everything goes well.
The village no longer funds three officers, though Young, who spent $ 30,000 herself on attorney’s fees, says officials lost state money when their permit was revoked and then went re-grant.
He said the town could have received about $ 52,000 from the state in a sales tax quota if its store had opened before the state’s fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
Still, try not to stop.
“This has been a very spiritual process for me, even my logo has sacred geometry,” he said. “If I stay focused on something that’s negative, well, let’s say I’m doing my best to eliminate all those negative things.”
Instead, Young has been working 16 hours a day to buy stock and finish renovations, so the building and its 10 part-time employees meet all training requirements, the building meets the code and she follows the state rules of the ARM.
At least one expert says the work has paid off.
“It’s top notch,” said Denny Corrado of Regal Security Consultants, a company with 40 recreational marijuana clients between Saginaw and Wisconsin.
“Kelly goes beyond what she has to do,” said Corrado, who trained Young’s staff and helps both municipalities and business owners comply with state marijuana law.
The ARM requires that cannabis be tracked from seed to product to customer. Young is beta testing a system developed by Orland Yee, a former Microsoft software engineer from Colorado who also worked for NASA.
However, not all of their systems are as technological.
A glass box contains Petoskey stone pipes and other handmade items. Frigidaire, the old wooden wall with glass panels of the old butcher, shows the style of the company.
“And people like to smell jars of stuff,” Young said, stretching a clear plastic bucket connected to a wire rope stored inside an old cigar humidifier that used to be in the grocery store.
“I could have loose jars, but then I would have to hold my hand,” he said. “With Covid, I’d rather people take the jars themselves and be able to say, ‘Mmm, yeah, I like that.’
The grocery store was saved when it was bought by a local man, Chris Corbett, who also owns the Blue Pelican bed and breakfast, Alden Lumber, Bellaire Hardware and some golf courses in the area.
The Young family still owns Village Market stores in Elk Rapids and Rapid City, Young said.
What Young calls the “sacred geometry” of his logo, two partial circles rotated vertically with a cross in the center, informs his business decisions and reflects the challenges he faces, he said.
“It’s yin and yang, light and darkness, both things are fused,” Young said. “Soft Opening Sunday is for anyone who wants to come in, talk, ask questions and get to know us during our test.”
The official opening date is Nov. 23, he said.
