A business group trying to launch a North Side marijuana dispensary hoped neighbors would look favorably on their community-minded plans.
But some West Ridge residents and the area’s City Council member instead looked at their resumes, saw “Chicago police officer” in their backgrounds and said “no thanks.”
Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, came out in opposition late last month to the proposal by the Kaneh Group, which includes 10 former Chicago cops as members.
The progressive alderman said he supports opening a dispensary in the ward, but decided to halt the bid after resident pushback emphasized “a fundamental justice concern” with the retired police ownership.
“I have questions and concerns about people who were paid to arrest people who might still be in jail for selling cannabis, selling cannabis,” Vasquez told the Tribune. “There’s just something fundamentally unfair and unjust about it.”
Vasquez does not plan to ask the City Council to make a zoning change needed by Kaneh to operate its Releaf dispensary at 2415 W. Peterson Ave., effectively blocking the business from opening.
The company’s ownership team, which still hopes to launch a dispensary somewhere in Chicago, is “just like any other entrepreneurs that pursue this,” partner Damone Richardson said after Vasquez’s rejection.
“Our team is comprised of people who have spent decades serving the city being members of their communities,” Richardson said. “They served their communities for hundreds of years between all of them, so I just feel like it’s their right as citizens to be able to do it.”
Richardson’s father and Kaneh partner, John Richardson, ended his 33-year Chicago Police Department career as deputy superintendent, he said.
The group pitched the business to 40th Ward residents during a “community-driven zoning” meeting in July. The ownership team is 85% made up of Black people from neighborhoods designated by the state as particularly hard hit by marijuana criminalization, the younger Richardson said.
The group shared plans to clean up the building it sought to lease with a new mural, avoid loud signage, prevent loitering and put a powerful security system into place, consultant Paul Gustafson said.
“Our goal truly is to beautify this building,” he said before addressing the sort of concerns residents often have amid zoning changes, such as parking and noise. “We really want to make this fit in … we are not looking for this to stand out.”
Gustafson touted the company’s plans to place 5% of the business into a “community trust” in part controlled by neighborhood residents, giving the community a degree of ownership and even some of the store’s profits.
And in an additional space attached to the building, doctors involved in the ownership team, made up primarily of Faith Community of St. Sabina churchgoers, would host seminars on specialties like pain management, postmenopausal health and orthopedics, he said.
“Our goal is not only to just be there, but obviously to be an active neighbor and to find ways to give back to the community and to participate. These are conversations we’ve had from the minute we’ve walked in the door,” Gustafson said.
When Vasquez shared a resident’s question about the “fundamental inequity” of retired police profiting from marijuana sales, Michael Collins, a real estate attorney working with the group, answered that the past criminalization of marijuana “hit home” for the group.
One owner’s son is currently incarcerated for a marijuana-related offense, he said.
“They feel that direct effect, and I would encourage you not to hold the fact that they were doing their job as it was told to them (against them),” Collins said.
He added that “bad prosecutorial discretion” played a more critical role in the harms of marijuana criminalization, while the older Richardson noted many of the drug-related policing actions officers took were prompted by calls made by safety-concerned Chicagoans.
“We do have people on our side who have absolutely been directly affected, so there’s a lot of empathy with people who are involved in this, and we do take that in consideration in terms of how we look to run the business,” Gustafson said.
Shortly after Vasquez’s decision, the younger Richardson told the Tribune it is “a little early” for the group to confirm it will not try to open at the site, but added the move puts his team “back to the drawing board.” The group has been trying to open a dispensary for six years, he said.
“We obviously don’t like it, but we’re going to keep moving forward,” Richardson said. “I’ve been in business for a long time, nothing is a straight line up, there will be setbacks, but we have to be persistent.”
The group in July 2023 won a coveted state social equity license, a designation meant to help people with low-level marijuana offenses or who come from poor neighborhoods open dispensaries in part as a way to correct the harms done to Black people, who were disproportionately prosecuted for marijuana-related offenses.
To get the zoning change needed to operate as a dispensary, Kaneh needed Vasquez’s support, in large part because of the tradition of “aldermanic prerogative,” the custom whereby City Council members almost always follow the will of a local alderman when voting on zoning issues.
Around half the community input Vasquez received supported the dispensary proposal, the alderman said. A quarter opposed it to prevent any dispensary from opening, and another quarter opposed it because of issues with the police connection, he said. Added up, most residents he heard from did not support the proposal, he said.
The alderman recalled getting arrested as a teen when two Black friends of his were smoking weed near Lake Michigan, “just being kids.” The cops barely looked at Vasquez, a Latino, until he told the police he was with the friends, though he was not smoking at the time, he said.
Vasquez added that he had been open to further negotiations with Kaneh over community benefits.
“My job is to represent our community, and our community had a problem with it,” he said.
Deirdre O’Connor, a police district council member whose area includes the dispensary site, said her opposition to the dispensary had nothing to do with anti-drug “reefer madness.” She cited seeing undercover police throwing teenagers up against cars and busting them for weed during her Arcadia Terrace childhood.
“It didn’t sit well with me to know that a bunch of former police officers were going to profit off of something that folks are still very much locked up and still criminalized over,” said O’Connor, who also works in Vasquez’s ward office overseeing public safety and infrastructure.
She added that she was unimpressed by the plans Kaneh presented to address equity concerns. They did not do enough to win community trust and should have made better proposals to support people harmed by marijuana criminalization, she argued.
“It should be different. It should be more equitable. It shouldn’t be former police officers,” O’Connor said.
She welcomed another dispensary to open at the site.