scottshoots/Shutterstock
Doghouse Farms has Detroit's first license for a recreational cannabis grow facility.
Detroit has finally awarded its first recreational cannabis license. But what's giving us major side-eye energy is that the license went to Doghouse Farms, a brand originally from Oregon, with a grow facility in Detroit.
After a two-year clusterfuck of trying to allow recreational weed in the city and a lawsuit over giving lifelong Detroiters first dibs, the first adult-use license goes to a business that isn’t even originally from Detroit. Isn’t this what we were trying to avoid in the first place— brands coming in from out-of-state and capitalizing on weed sales before longtime Detroiters?
Doghouse Farms’ Detroit facility is just a grow operation, which the city’s current regulations allow an unlimited number. However, only 100 adult-use recreational marijuana retailer licenses are available in the city.
The Doghouse Farms brand was formed in Oregon in 2005 and now has operations in Michigan, Florida, and Washington state. The brand opened its Detroit facility shortly after weed became legal in Michigan back in 2019, spending roughly $4 million to open up shop, Crain’s Detroit Business reports. They’ve been running as a strictly medical operation for the past 15 months.
"A (recreation license) is the only reason we came to Detroit," Eric Slutzky, CEO of Doghouse Farms in Michigan, told Crain's. "The city taking this long really cut the knees out of the local market, but we had faith the city would do the right thing."
Detroit communities that were ravaged by the war on drugs and thought they might finally be able to benefit from recreational marijuana regulations had faith the city would do the right thing too. Guess they’ll just have to keep waiting.
Slutzky told Crain's that Doghouse Farms was able to get its license so quickly because they had everything already prepared to file.
"I had a file ready to go as soon as the city went live," he said. "I've spent the last year following very closely with what the City Council was going to do."
Doghouse now has two Class C adult-use recreational grow licenses, allowing them to grow 4,000 plants at a time, and three Class C medical marijuana licenses to grow 4,500 plants for medicinal use at its 25,000 square-foot Detroit operation, according to Crain's.
Doghouse Farms’ Detroit location does have some ties to the city, as COO Nir Saar is a former principal in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and Slutzky is the former corporate vice president of real estate for Farmington Hills-based insurance brokerage H.W. Kaufman Group.
Still, we were hoping that Detroit’s first recreational marijuana license would go to a business that was more homegrown. With the city facing a pending lawsuit over a provision that prevents medical facilities from getting a recreational license until 2027, the future is uncertain.
Will Detroit ever get it together? How long will Detroit business owners have to wait before they can participate in recreational marijuana sales? Find out in the next episode of "who even knows at this rate?"
Stay connected with Detroit Metro Times. Subscribe to our newsletters, and follow us on Google News, Apple News, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, or TikTok.
