New laws allow recreational cannabis sales in more than 20 states, but it remains illegal under federal law, making starting a retail cannabis business difficult. This is Part 6 of a series.
It’s a perfect spring morning in New York, one of those rarest of days when, against all odds, this rat buffet of a city smells good, like lilacs and azaleas and whatever else is blooming in community gardens, parks, and window boxes.
But it’s another type of flower—cannabis—that’s the draw on Third Street in the East Village, just steps away from the Bowery. We’ve come for a preview tour of Gotham, which opened its doors a few days later, on May 11, making it one of five licensed cannabis stores open in the city.
We’ve been checking in with Gotham for months after we launched this series with a look at the hurdles it would face as a cannabis business:
- Under a federal drug law, 280E, cannabis businesses pay tax rates “that can eclipse 70%,” Politico reported.
- Gotham and other licensed stores in the US generally don’t accept credit cards, because credit-card companies won’t permit cannabis sales, leaving customers to pay with cash or debit cards.
- Cannabis retailers also face challenges such as banking, point-of-sale systems, and in New York, more than 1,400 stores operating without a license.
Gotham/Christopher Coe
Pot-ery barn: Step into the vast 2,800-square-foot store, which was designed by Cinema Vitae and features unfinished concrete floors and dramatic lighting fixtures, and shoppers might be surprised to not immediately see the most newsworthy item: cannabis.
In the center of the store is a vast sculpture of a tree, by artist Molly Lowe, that reaches 18 feet to the ceiling, its limbs outstretched over a bench that encircles it.
For sale on tables and shelves along the walls are items including silk sleep masks, pillows, blankets, and scented candles. All of these are what Gotham founder Joanne Wilson calls “canna-adjacent” because many people find the drug helpful for relaxation and sleeping, for which these items could help, too.
Items for sale that might connect less obviously to cannabis include Gotham’s coffee table books about art, New York, and cooking, or a backgammon set.
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“We wanted to really harness the experience in lifestyle and culture,” Billy Richards, chief creative officer at Gotham, told us. He explained that the “lifestyle concept store” isn’t just about the substances and accouterments, but what you do while using them.
“This is all [the] kind of stuff that you love to look at when you’re partaking,” Richards said.
The selection of pipes, ashtrays, and grinders on display have distinct design aesthetics and are upscale—think more museum shop than head shop—including trendy women-owned cannabis accessory brands House of Puff, Tetra, and Sackville & Co.
Stairs lead to a mezzanine gallery space that will have rotating displays, beginning with a show of NFT art.
Gotham/Christopher Coe
Finally, the back of the store is where the cannabis products themselves are sold. From behind glass display cases, budtenders will offer guidance on a range of products, from flower itself in jars and pre-rolls, to edibles, vapes, and tinctures.
Drug war aftermath: The law legalizing recreational marijuana in New York passed in 2021, and gave priority to applicants with past marijuana convictions in what Trivette Knowles, public affairs press officer and manager of community outreach at New York’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), previously told Retail Brew was an “equity-first approach to legalization.”
Gotham has a partnership with Strive, the East Harlem nonprofit where Ayesha George, its executive director, told Retail Brew about a quarter of the programs are for “justice-impacted” New Yorkers, some of them being recently paroled after serving sentences for marijuana-related convictions.
More than half (51%) of Gotham’s profits will go to Strive.
“They were disproportionately locked up and literally put away for things that are now legal,” George said. “How do we make this come full circle? We then receive funding that will provide programming to get some of these same individuals into actual employment that’s gainful.”
This bud’s for SKU: As a construction crew that was still working on the store buzzed around her, Wilson noted that when other licensed cannabis stores opened, long lines of customers waited to get in, and had a prediction for when it opened a few days later.
“It’s going to be mayhem,” she said. “In a very good way.”