A new dispensary is opening on Grant Street, less than a quarter-mile from the State Capitol and right behind a Denver marijuana landmark.
Green Dragon, one of Colorado's largest dispensary chains, will open a new store at 1250 Grant within the next several weeks, according to ownership. The dispensary will be located in a carriage house on a connected property behind the "marijuana mansion" β where some of Colorado's marijuana legalization language was written.
Formerly home to the offices of Vicente Sederberg and the Marijuana Policy Project β a law firm and activism organization both influential in Colorado marijuana reform in the early 2000s and 2010s β the mansion hosted many strategy conversations that led to Amendment 64, the voter-approved measure that legalized recreational marijuana in late 2012. Soon, a dispensary right behind the mansion will be exercising the legal rights that were created steps away.
Green Dragon co-owner Alex Levine says the dispensary could launch with a soft opening as early as this week, with a grand opening planned within the month. The company had expected to open sooner, but the late October snowfalls delayed those plans.
In 2018, a marijuana-friendly spa and consumption center attempted to open in the mansion under the City of Denver's social pot use licensing program, but was denied because it was eighteen feet short of the mandatory 1,000-foot buffer between consumption areas and child-care centers. Levine says that the owners of the mansion at 1244 Grant, who also own the property leased by Green Dragon, still have marijuana-centric plans for the near future, but couldn't elaborate.
The carriage house is farther than 1,000 feet from the child-care center, and has had an active dispensary license with the state Marijuana Enforcement Division for years without a dispensary actually being there.
"We're extremely excited to be back in the metro part of Denver, right in the middle of the city," Levine says. "The snowstorm delayed it a little bit, but we're really close."
Green Dragon already has three stores in Denver proper, as well as locations in Aurora, Edgewater and Thornton; Levine says the company wanted to expand into more heavily trafficked areas. Along with the new dispensary in Capitol Hill, Green Dragon is also opening a dispensary in Boulder "within one or two months," he notes.
The new Boulder store will be located in the former Boulder Botanics dispensary at the Crossroads East Shopping Center, within walking distance of the University of Colorado Boulder campus. It will be Green Dragon's first dispensary in the Boulder area and the fourteenth store in the chain, including the new Denver location.
"Boulder is a market that we have been trying to get into for years now, so we're really looking forward to opening up there," Levine says.
Green Dragon also has plans to open a fifteenth store in Denver in the near future, according to the company.