A party was kicking off on a Lower East Side street corner Thursday evening. Passersby stopped to take photos as others lit up joints and nodded along to legendary New York City DJ Funkmaster Flex, who was spinning hip-hop classics as a line was already wrapped around the corner retail space at Orchard and Delancey streets. Among the crowds, Coss Marte, CEO and founder of Con Bud, the licensed retail cannabis dispensary opening that day, couldn’t take more than two steps without people stopping him to congratulate him. “It's been a roller coaster ride,” Marte told Bisnow. “I feel like a whole weight lifted off my shoulders.”
But it has been an uphill battle for Marte, who was awarded a cannabis retail license in April, and all the other operators of legal recreational cannabis dispensaries in New York.Con Bud is one of just 27 licensed dispensaries now open across the state, more than 2.5 years after… Read the full story here. |