First recreational marijuana dispensary opens in Eastpointe – Macomb Daily
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A new recreational marijuana shop that opened this month in Eastpointe will be the only one that meets an end-of-the-year deadline to do so.
Moses Roses recently began a soft opening at the high-traffic corner of Eight Mile and Kelly Road to be the lone entity of three that were guaranteed to receive a license to meet the Dec. 31 deadline to open.
“On behalf of Moses Roses, we’re tickled pink” to be open, said the dispensary’s attorney, Chris Aiello. “We’re going to be good community partners, corporate partners,” noting the company built four flower beds for a “community garden” for green thumbs to plant.
Moses Roses was one of three entities to receive medical marijuana licenses in 2022 and were allowed to convert their licenses to recreational if they met the deadline, after some city officials expressed frustration over delays in the openings and the license holders lobbied for it.
“It’s just a process that went on,” said Chris Aiello, attorney for the business and part land owner, of the more than three-year time period. “This was one of the early licenses in the state of Michigan. They (Moses Roses) had to go through both stages – medical, and then wait for the city to get comfortable with recreational because there’s no medical market.”
“Medical marijuana is effectively dead,” attorney Will DiSessa, representing one of the other license holders, told city officials last June, according to a published report.
Medical marijuana now accounts for only 1% of overall cannabis sales in Michigan. In 2020, medical marijuana sales represented almost 50% of overall cannabis sales. That dropped to under 10% in 2024, according to data reported by the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency.
The land owner, Eastpointe Land Management, which is leasing the facility to Moses Roses, acquired the property in 2023 for $975,000, according to city records, and combined three parcels into one. The land owner has invested more than $1.5 million, according to a published report. The corner has been transformed from an old burned-down restaurant, the Bread Basket, and an oil change facility into a spacious two-story structure with the first floor functioning as a dispensary with a lobby and sales counters and display shelves, and two ATMs. Plans for the second floor have not been determined, Aiello said.
Aiello acknowledged the business operators are among those throughout the industry who are concerned about the new state 24% wholesale tax that will take effect Jan. 1, worried whether the expected price increases will reduce sales.
“I think the industry is going to calibrate in January,” he said two days before Christmas. “There’s not a lot of movement right now within the industry on how to handle it. It’s going to be up to individual relationships with your cultivators on how this is going to be handled.”
The growers will be responsible for the wholesaler to charge the dispensaries with the tax, he said.
The marijuana market is already saturated with a proliferation of dispensaries in metro-Detroit. That and the higher prices that will result from the tax are expected to increase competition among the hundreds of dispensaries in the state.
“It’s going to come down to the location of the stores,” Aeillo said. “It (Moses Roses) is in a good location, a good traffic count, a number of stores around it. Arguably, this store is the closest (dispensary) to St. Clair Shores and Grosse Pointe, which don’t have the product and probably won’t.”
It will come down to other business basics, he said.
“It’s like any other business — shoes, Seven/11’s, gas stations,” Aiello said.
Moses store has hired and is training about 10 of the 15 employees it plans to start with, and is in the process of hiring more people. All of them so far are Eastpointe residents, according to Aiello.
Moses Roses operates six other stores, including one each in Detroit, Lincoln Park and Waterford Township.
Meanwhile, the Common Citizen marijuana dispensary, one of the other two companies that received a conversion license, will not open at its proposed location on Gratiot Avenue between Forest and Bell avenues by the deadline after the city rejected its scaled-down plan, though the matter is subject to litigation filed by the dispensary’s parent company.
The City Council voted 3-2 last June to deny a special land use permit request from Common Citizen after it submitted a revised site plan that reduced its original plan to redevelop an entire block on Gratiot Avenue between Forest and Bell avenues. Instead, Common Citizen proposed to refurbish one of the existing buildings, and excluded the parcel on the north end of the block.
About a week after the city’s denial, Common Citizen’s parent company, MPM-R X LLC, sued the city, claiming the decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” and “not based on competent, material, and substantial evidence as required by law.”
MPM-R X LLC says the city had no basis to reject the new plan because the property’s use didn’t change.
“The city approved MPM’s site plan accompanying its SLU (special land use) request based on consideration of near-identical factors that must govern the City’s SLU decision,” the company alleges in the complaint. “There is no path for rationalizing the city’s denial of MPM’s SLU request with its approval of MPM’s site plan a few weeks earlier.”
The company alleges that if its license is allowed to expire “it will suffer the irreparable (and immeasurable) harm of losing its non-transferable interests in both real estate and the accompanying marihuana permits (for both medical and adult use), as well as the untold resources and time it has devoted to this project over the last four years.”
A hearing on MPM’s request for an injunction and temporary restraining order to halt the city’s denial is scheduled for Monday in front of Macomb County Circuit Judge James Maceroni, after prior hearing dates have been adjourned multiple times.
The third license holder that was made eligible for a conversion license, Holistic Health Wayne, has abandoned its plans, at least for now, for property located at 21145 Gratiot. The company’s lawsuit against the city was dismissed.
A total of four recreational licenses will be ultimately allowed in Eastpointe. Common Citizen and Holistic Health each still could seek one of those licenses.
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