The Dome, one of Kent’s most distinctive buildings, may find new life as a medical marijuana dispensary.
The Kent Board of Zoning Appeals on Monday approved a 10-foot property setback variance for Galenas LLC, opening the door to what could be the city’s second dispensary, after the Planning Commission approved the first in May. Both are awaiting clearance from a state regulator.
Geoff Korff, CEO of Galenas, which already has dozens of locations throughout Ohio, told the board that he scouted a handful of properties before settling on The Dome, located at 166 Currie Hall Parkway, between the Marc’s shopping plaza and state Route 261.
The building most recently housed a bar and concert venue that shuttered during the pandemic. Before that, it was a strip club.
Korff was obliged to seek the variance because city zoning codes call for a 100-foot minimum setback from residential districts, and there are some rental homes across the the street and to the east of The Dome. None of the residents or property owners attended the zoning meeting, though Korff said he had spoken to a handful of neighbors, and all were supportive of the business plan.
The Dome is “one of those landmark types of buildings that people in the city know, that’s fallen on hard times and could definitely use a facelift,” he said. “We’re hoping we get a license and can bring a little bit of rejuvenation back to that area, back to that area specifically, and make it a landmark, but for a good reason.”
Korff’s next step is to appear before Kent’s Planning Commission to obtain a conditional use approval. Armed with that, he can apply to the Ohio Board of Pharmacy for the coveted license that would be required to actually open for business.
“We have to essentially build a business on paper before we even know if we’re going to get one, and it’s challenging,” he said. “There’s local approvals, and we have to engage with third-party professionals in order to get everything situated appropriately for the application, so it’s quite the extensive undertaking.”
Kent’s next Planning Commission meeting is Oct. 5. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy has set a Nov. 18 deadline for applications, and is running what is essentially a lottery to award 73 licenses. Korff hopes those granted licenses will be notified by spring of 2022.
He said he is applying for multiple licenses, including in Sandusky, Oxford and Piqua. So it’s possible that any of his applications — or none — will be accepted.
“Once you get a lottery ticket, you go into the hat, and hopefully your name gets pulled out of the hat,” he said.
If Galenas’s Kent location is pulled, he envisions an extensive facelift to The Dome’s exterior. The interior will also undergo a total rehab to comply with state regulations.
“The security and structural integrity of the building will get upgraded a lot,” he said. “Dispensaries in Ohio, despite what some of the misconceptions are, are really more like banks in terms of how they’re outfitted. There’s going to be a vault on site that is a federally regulated storage container, essentially. We’ve also got interior and exterior cameras. There’s going to be secure, restricted access points throughout the facility. It’s not like a pharmacy that you go into. … It’s set up more like a bank than anything else.”
The exterior camera will not only protect the building, but the surrounding area, he added.
“Typically these areas that allow dispensaries to exist there become more secure, not less, because now there’s very high-resolution security footage of the entire area surrounding the dispensary,” he said.
Galenas’s website bills the company as “a patient focused, craft cannabis cultivator” that utilizes “first-in-class technology to produce the highest grade medical cannabis for patients.” Dozens of dispensaries across Ohio and Michigan sell Galenas products, the nearest ones in Akron and Cuyahoga Falls.
In 2018, Kent set rules and regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries. Other communities have not followed suit, requiring patients to drive an hour or more to get the pain relief they need, he said.
“There’s still plenty of cities across the state … they don’t understand medical marijuana, they’ve got the whole ‘reefer madness’ concept still locked into their brains, so they’re not as welcoming to the idea, so to some extent, to go to cities that will let you in there, it’s all the better,” he said.
He does not believe any communities in Geauga County have established regulations for medical marijuana facilities, establishing Kent as “kind of like an island in terms of east-west traffic across the state. I think Kent certainly has the potential to become something of a hub if it did get more than one license.”
It could happen. Buckeye Relief has also completed the pre-application process, hoping to open a dispensary on West Main Street in Kent.
Caroline Henry, Buckeye Relief’s Government Affairs Director, was not available for comment.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.