In marijuana ‘race to the finish,’ Spinney pushes his dispensary forward
Bruce Spinney is not giving up his plans to open a retail marijuana business on Worcester Street, he told the Planning Board Monday night as he presented building plans.
Spinney’s business, Discern’d Cannabis Purveyors, is largely considered the business third in line for Grafton’s two marijuana licenses. He entered what is now termed a “race to the finish” after HCA holders Resinate, MJ’s Market, and Nature’s Remedy, giving up his seat on the Select Board in the process.
“We’ve been monitoring the progress of the other candidates in town,” Spinney said during the public hearing. “There are some entities that have had their permissions for a very long time that have done virtually nothing.”
Spinney, meanwhile, acquired 130 and 134 Worcester Street, a 3.4 acre site beside the Mass Pike overpass that was formerly home to a building which has sat vacant and boarded up for the past 12 years. In recent weeks, the building was demolished, leaving only the foundation on which Spinney and his business partner, Allan Villatoro, plan to construct a two-story one tenant marijuana dispensary, totally approximately 2,383 interior square feet.
Spinney said they plan to build “whether it is going to be a cannabis facility or just retail.”
Fifty-three parking spaces — about three times what Spinney expects the business to need — will be located on the north side and rear of the building, with the extra spaces meant to mitigate traffic. The parking area will be obscured from the street by a picket fence and landscaping. Customers will enter through the rear of the building.
The Planning Board received 12 letters against the facility, largely from residents opposed to the idea of a marijuana business at all. Some objected to the location on busy Worcester Street, across from a residential area and within about two miles of Grafton High School and Grafton Middle School.
“Abandoned buildings aren’t good for property values,” Spinney noted after one comment.
Planning Board member David Robbins added that the project is zoned for light industrial business. The property’s neighbors include another business complex and Aggregate Industries, a concrete business.
“If this does not go forward, it may be something people find just as objectionable,” Robbins said.
The public hearing will continue on February 22.
