Hartford Business Journal

23 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | May 23, 2022 Rebuilding State Pier, reimagining our future A New Day for New London To learn more visit revolution-wind.com "The next step once they get that provisional is to zero in on a location," Budd said. Budd said entrepreneurs should be researching towns they hope to open in, and find out whether they've put moratoriums in place. According to data from the DCP, at least 55 municipalities have instituted temporary bans on or prohibited cannabis sales. "It's going to be a little bit of a race to who can get into those top locations, get through zoning regulations and either purchase a building or get a lease going," Budd said. In addition to location, the provisional licensing period is also when companies can begin to hire employees, Seagull said. "People are going to have to start building out who they're hiring," said Andrew Glassman, a lawyer with law firm Pullman & Comley. "A lot of these applicants submitted internal organization charts, but in a lot of cases you don't know who you're hiring because it's premature." Budd said the DCP will do reviews during the provisional period before final licensing to make sure facilities are up to standard. "This is a highly-regulated market, so you need to set your business up in a way that you're ready to comply with that," Seagull said. Since existing medical dispensaries already have locations and prior license approval, they won't need to get a provisional license. Instead, they only need to get municipal and state approvals to convert. Those hybrid application requests have already been coming in, Seagull said. For example, Fine Fettle has already received municipal approvals to convert its three medical cannabis dispensaries into hybrid locations. The company is also looking to open a recreational cannabis retail facility in Manchester. Glassman said he's interested to see how medical dispensaries plan to expand capacity. The challenge for some retailers and growers will be balancing the need to grow their facilities with limited space and supply. Still, because they already have operations in place, the conversion will be easier than starting new. "But if some of them have been sitting on some additional capacity or have room within their facilities to quickly expand without finding a new building or doing a significant build-out process, then I would hope and would think that they're all going to be putting those plans in process pretty soon," Glassman said. For the state's immediate retail future, it's safe to assume that medical players converting their dispensaries to hybrid facilities will be the first to open. "They'll absolutely be first," said Budd, the CPA. "You're going to have someone like Fine Fettle or Curaleaf that's going to go to market way before any private newcomer is." DCP goes on hiring spree to prep for recreational cannabis market By Skyler Frazer sfrazer@hartfordbusiness.com T he Department of Consumer Protection announced earlier this year it would be hiring about 60 new employees to serve the state's cannabis industry. DCP Commissioner Michelle Seagull said those hirings are underway, with 29 positions filled so far. "We're still doing a significant amount of hiring," Seagull said. "We've brought in some licensing people to help with that process, we've built out the legal team as well and we're bringing in others with some drug-control expertise who can be available to start reviewing applications as they come in." In terms of her department's oversight role, Seagull said she's heard concerns about the license lottery process, including the fact that applicants can submit an unlimited number of applications, giving deeper-pocketed companies an advantage. "There are different ways you can [host a lottery], but I think they all have some pros and cons to them," Seagull said. "I trust that the legislative process worked, and we'll see things play out. If it's not what people wanted, there's always next year to tweak that." She also said concerns have been expressed about the possibility of multistate operators dominating the adult-use market, but there's only so much DCP can control. She said the law was heavily discussed and negotiated by the legislature before it passed, and DCP has to implement the language as approved. Seagull said she recognizes that people would prefer that multistate operators don't dominate the market, "but the legislation doesn't really create a pathway for us to prevent that." "Our job is really to implement what was written, rather than try to rethink if they could have or should have done something different," she said. Andrew Glassman

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