This Labor Day weekend, the Royal Blend Cannabis Dispensary is expected to open in Rosendale. The dispensary will be located in rented space in an ex-Esso service station owned by Ed Parker at 2223 Route 32, about a mile north of the Rosendale Stewart’s.

An informal soft opening is scheduled for Friday with an official, hard opening to take place on Saturday, probably at 11 a.m. The days and weeks before opening have been uncertain, as various approvals, including Department of Transportation curb requirements, had to be either met or waived.

"We're opening!" crowed Reginald Fluellen, a consultant on the long-delayed project.

None of it has been easy. Ed Parker is renting his building to Royal Blend, which is owned by Sonia and Delaurna Murphy, who have held an Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) dispensary license for more than a year while waiting for Rosendale to approve the application. The Murphys also own and run the Royal Blend Jamaican & Soul Food restaurant on Main Street in Poughkeepsie.

As landlord, Parker made his real estate dispensary application to the Rosendale Town Planning board a year and a half ago. Parker doesn’t intend to open a dispensary; he only wishes to rent real estate space to the Murphys. But for 18 months he has been contending with what seemed to him to be an endless stream of detail demands from the town.

Progress has been so slow, with so many people stuck waiting, that last year, Parker’s building held weekend cannabis sale pop-up events to aid overstocked local producers, until they were ended by the OCM at the end of the year.

Over the last year, both the towns of Rosendale and Marbletown held multiple meetings, including public meetings where the public was invited to weigh in on the idea of opening dispensaries. Few negative opinions were expressed in either town. Currently, neither town has any further dispensary applications to process.

This week, Parker got some help from Reginald Fluellen, founder of Fluellen Associates, a NYC research/consulting firm providing services in public health, public policy, community development, and justice. Fluellen is also a senior consultant with the Cannabis Social Equity Coalition.

“Highly Cooperative…”

The Town of Rosendale, Fluellen noted on Monday, “has been highly cooperative with Parker’s real estate initiative.” He stressed that Parker is not going to be running any dispensary himself. “He’s just renting a property to a client in a real estate transaction.”

Housing Works was assisting the Murphys with their installation. That organization opened and now operates New York City’s first legal cannabis dispensary. Some years ago, Housing Works began as a dual AIDS and homelessness charity, but has expanded to general issues of justice and equity – ideas that are tied into the state’s cannabis dispensary roll-out. Among Housing Works’ other businesses are a minority-controlled social-service agency that serves people with HIV and AIDS, and those who are homeless or formerly incarcerated, as well as a number of thrift stores and cafés.

On Friday, Housing Works held an employment drive at Royal Blends’ Rosendale site.

Dozens turned up, said a Housing Works spokesperson while working in the dispensary Tuesday, and “we hired 7 for Royal Blends who will be trained as ‘budtenders.’”

$30K+ Spent on Protective Electronics

Parker said he already had more than $30,000 invested in electronic security for his property. And, as per the DOT, he will be adding more parking spaces and a curb to the parking area.

Costly security apparatuses are becoming a cornerstone of dispensaries. Cameras, motion detectors, breaking glass, sound detectors and secure vaults all play a part in the building’s security system. An alternate wireless link is there for when the internet goes down. All actions detected by the system must be electronically stored for a year, along with a duplicate recording which must be stored for a month. Someone, and something remote, must continually keep an eye on the video feeds as they record.

Last Friday, August 23, the OCM conducted a virtual inspection of Parker’s site and gave it a conditional approval. On Monday, those conditions —product racks needed in the security vault along with warning signs on the walls — were fulfilled and again virtually inspected by the OCM. On Tuesday morning, after a year and a half in limbo, the OCM finally issued a formal authorization to open the dispensary.