Three new dispensaries are set to open soon in and around Ithaca, including Collegetown’s first dispensary. These additions will bring the total number of dispensaries in Tompkins County to six, all of which opened in the last 18 months.
Opening soon are The Highly Connected on Franklin Street, Collegetown Dispensary on Dryden Road in the City of Ithaca and Upstate Haze on Dryden Road in the town of Dryden. All three are slated to open their doors to customers in the next three months.
Collegetown Dispensary
The New York Office of Cannabis Management’s Proximity Protected Locations for Adult-Use Retail Dispensaries & Registered Organizations map indicates an active license for an adult-use retail location at 105 Dryden Road, the former Subway location in Collegetown. According to a certificate of assumed name, this establishment will be named Collegetown Dispensary.
Rachel Mitchell, the general manager of Collegetown Dispensary, said she is planning to open the store in late August, which would coincide with the start of Cornell’s academic year. She said the location of the dispensary would set it apart from others in the area.
“Being in Collegetown and that being such a pivotal area, being near the campus, I think that will be good,” Mitchell said. “The neighborhood really speaks for itself.”
Mitchell said through the dispensary she wants to emphasize an “educational” component so that customers gain knowledge about how the products will affect their bodies.
“There’s just so much out there in the cannabis space,” Mitchell said. “And there’s so much misinformation that we’ve all known our whole life about it because it’s been an illegal product, [and] it hasn’t been studied.”
Mitchell declined to comment on the identities of the owners of Collegetown Dispensary but said it would be a majority woman-owned business, a rarity in the male-dominated cannabis industry.
Upstate Haze
James Steiner Jr. and Riley Rynone are in the process of opening a dispensary called Upstate Haze on 1280 Dryden Rd., near the Finger Lakes Library System. Upstate Haze hopes to open for business before the end of October.
Upstate Haze has a microbusiness license, which authorizes the cultivation, processing, distribution, retail sale and delivery of the licensee’s own cannabis products. With this license, the business will grow its own cannabis at an off-site farm near the dispensary. Steiner and Rynone said they take pride in what will be the business’s deep connection to the Finger Lakes region since all aspects of the business — from growing to selling — will take place locally.
“We’re trying to be Ithaca’s dispensary,” Rynone said. “Out of all the rest of them, this is the one that’s gonna have the roots down, that’s going to be here. We’re going to be a staple.”
Steiner and Rynone also said they wanted the dispensary to serve as a community space and hope to use their adjacent outdoor space to hold events. This way, they aim to combat the stigma and hesitance that surrounds cannabis.
“It would be awesome to bring the community together around cannabis instead of having everyone feel like they need to hide it or keep it away from people,” Steiner said.
Steiner suggested inviting local bands or comedians to their outdoor space or holding events like trivia night or open mics, similar to the events at many Ithaca bars.
The Highly Connected
Wendy Matesanz and her husband JP Toro are opening a dispensary called The Highly Connected at 423 Franklin St. this month. The location previously housed The Piggery butcher shop.
Matesanz said she and her husband are well known in the cannabis industry through their renowned Toro Glass business that sells products like pipes and other cannabis-related accessories.
She added that through their ties in the industry, they are “highly connected” to local growers, allowing their dispensary to have exclusive and high-quality cannabis which Matesanz said will help them stand out. The dispensary will have limited edition Toro Glass and curated products from Toro and the company’s team according to its website.
“People want to utilize our location as a kind of a hub for some of their best of the best, or as a place to release new products because we have such a large outreach through Toro Glass,” Matesanz said.
The Highly Connected was approved for a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary license from the OCM in July 2023, but Matesanz said opening the store was held up for months due to litigation against OCM regarding the office’s criteria for CAURD licenses. The lawsuit halted 400 CAURD licensees from opening until a settlement was reached and approved by a judge in December 2023.
Matesanz said she is excited about the dispensary’s location across the street from the Ithaca Farmers Market, which sees thousands of people every weekend during peak season. Improvements to the waterfront and an influx of apartment buildings in the area, Matesanz said, make her believe the location will be “an excellent spot to be long term.”
Other Active and Pending Licenses
According to the OCM map, a medical dispensary license held by Citiva Medical LLC is active, but its stated location on West Buffalo Street is closed. Additionally, a license for an adult-use microbusiness is active for a location on Cherry Street, but the lot is empty.
Four additional adult-use retail licenses have been submitted and are pending for locations in Newfield, Ulysses, Danby and the town of Ithaca, bringing the possible number of dispensaries in the county to 11.
OCM does not have a limit on the number of dispensaries an area can have past minimum distance requirements between stores. The office holds the primary role in reviewing and issuing licenses and regulates that there must be at least 1,000 feet between adult-use cannabis retail dispensaries in municipalities with a population of 20,000 people or more and 2,000 feet for municipalities with less than 20,000 people.
Further, any dispensary must be at least 200 feet from a building used exclusively as a house of worship and 500 feet from a building used exclusively as a school on the same street as the proposed retail location.
Tom Knipe, the deputy director of economic development for the City of Ithaca, said the city reviews an applicant’s proposed location under current zoning rules and provides the information to OCM for licensing, but leaves approval or refusal of licenses to the state.
Knipe said the city does not have any specific regulations around dispensaries. They found in reviewing the state’s criteria for licensing that OCM addressed many of the components the city would have.
“I think our assumption is that there is a natural limit, based on the buffers and current city zoning for commercial activity, to the number of dispensaries that could be licensed,” Knipe said.
Cannabis and the Community
William Jane Dispensary on the Ithaca Commons, Aspire in Ithaca’s West End and the Dryden Dispensary in Dryden are the three retail locations currently licensed and open within the county.
Legal cannabis sales in the county started in March 2023 when William Jane opened. In documents obtained by The Ithaca Voice via FOIL request, in the 17 months since its opening, Tompkins County has received $222,532.22 in tax revenue generated from the sale of adult-use cannabis products.
According to the documents, the Office of the State Comptroller makes the tax revenue payments quarterly to the county. Tompkins County received payments in October 2023, January 2024 and April 2024.
The income from the four percent local tax is split 75 percent to cities, towns or villages within the county and 25 percent to the county. The county is in charge of distributing the funds to the municipalities where the dispensaries generating the tax revenue are located.
Several businesses neighboring dispensaries perceived either a positive or negligible impact on their volume of customers. However, many of them called on the city to address disorderly behavior nearby, which included smoking cannabis in spaces where the substance is not allowed.
Deirdre Kurzweil, owner of Sunny Days Ithaca, said that while she celebrates the decrease in stigma surrounding cannabis that has come with the opening of dispensaries like the neighboring William Jane, she dislikes that some people choose to smoke on the Ithaca Commons, which is a violation of city law.
“I don’t think [William Jane] has changed anything, except this,” Kurzweil said. “It’s not bringing different people into my store — it’s bringing some groups of people to just sit and make the Commons their living room.”
Kurzweil added that she has met the owners of William Jane and considers them “good people doing an honest business,” noting that the business will also bring revenue to the city. However, she considers smoking any substance on the Commons “disrespectful,” especially near businesses or the playground, and hopes increased security measures will discourage smoking on The Commons.
Kate Conroy, owner of The Rhine House — a bar adjacent to Aspire — also said that operating near a dispensary has had little effect on her business. While it has not brought a significant number of new customers to The Rhine House, Conroy said that any new business is a net positive for the area.
“They’re good neighbors,” Conroy said.
Other businesses, like Autumn Leaves Used Books on the Commons, said they noticed a boost in customers with the opening of nearby dispensaries.
Jessica Williams, who works at Autumn Leaves, said the opening of William Jane increased business to Autumn Leaves and other businesses nearby because of people traveling from other parts of New York.
However, Williams also noted that she has seen unlicensed cannabis vendors “soliciting” people near her store and an increase in unwanted behavior on the Commons, though she wasn’t sure if this was caused by the dispensary.
“I do think the presence of the dispensary on The Commons is overall a good thing,” Williams said. “But I do think there need to be more public resources — more city resources — funneled into a third-party program more reflective of a peace program to address some of the issues we’re seeing.”
Kate Sanders is a reporter from the Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun’s summer fellowship at The Ithaca Voice. This piece was originally published in The Ithaca Voice.
Caroline Grass is a former reporter for The Ithaca Voice. Contact her at [email protected].