According to co-owner Colin Weynand, Horizon Cannabis is slated to open in July near the Belmar shopping center in space that once housed a Cross Genetics dispensary, right next to a veterinarian's office in a two-storefront strip mall at 6745 West Mississippi Avenue in Lakewood.
Weynand's group got the entire building when it bought Cross Genetics, and decided to demolish the interior wall to connect the two establishments. The structure is also undergoing extensive interior and exterior renovations, in order to double the retail square footage and give the dispensary an updated look.
The grand-opening date is currently July 2, but Horizon Cannabis could have a soft opening a few days earlier, Weynand says. And when it does open, he promises that both recreational shoppers and medical marijuana patients should expect some of the best prices and regular deals in the southwest metro. Weynand has an ownership stake in an extraction business, HRVST Labs, which should help with costs, but Lakewood's local tax is about 7 percent lower than Denver's.
"Our tax rate is 19 percent, instead of the 26 percent you get hit with down the street in Denver. We're excited to be able to offer those customers what we think is a better deal," he says. "We want to take more of a heady approach in all of our product lines and skews."
The building was formerly a Cross Genetics dispensary and veterinarian office.
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Lakewood has fewer than a dozen dispensaries, all of which could only sell medical marijuana until last year, when voters finally approved a recreational pot sales initiative. A town of nearly 160,000 people, Lakewood has seen several of its longtime stores open for recreational sales in recent months, including Ajoya, the Clinic and Leiffa.
"The Lakewood market is super-unique, and we're in a good place right now to jump into it," Weynand says. "There are more people in Lakewood than in Boulder, and there are just a handful of licenses."
In addition to HRVST Labs and Horizon Cannabis, Weynand co-owns a dispensary located off Interstate 70 in Idaho Springs, Dispensary Exit 243; he also received a marijuana growing operation in the Cross Genetics deal, with the first harvest expected in early 2023.
A native Texan who moved here from New Orleans in 2015, Weynand came to Colorado to join the marijuana trade. Although that goal didn't take long to achieve, it played out in a different form than he'd anticipated.
"I was originally trying to start an infused protein bar company," he remembers.
Weynand was only a few years into his cannabis journey at the time he moved here, but he was already a believer. Self-described as an obese teenager, he was in a motorcycle accident at eighteen and injured his back. Doctors prescribed him painkillers, but he says they only made him feel worse and lose motivation. Then a friend recommended that he try smoking weed for the pain.
Marijuana not only helped with his pain, but helped him find a new career. "Within two years, I had lost 150 pounds and became a personal trainer," Weynand says. "It motivated me to work out for hours. That motivated me to come to Colorado and start a cannabis company."
With two dispensaries and a hash lab in Colorado, Weynand has more bandwidth to take on projects close to his heart. Although he's not shutting out the idea of making those protein bars one day — Colorado is a national leader in both marijuana sales and physical activity — for now he's focusing on his newest store. And he has an interesting take on connecting to customers at Horizon Cannabis.
"It will be a corporate structure in the background, but with a local vibe up front," he explains. "You know, like a reverse mullet: party in the front, business in the back."
