Many of our eagled-eyed readers picked up on a big sign that appeared a few weeks ago above the Unleashed store signage on the 14th Street side of the 1402 Wilshire Blvd building. Is the city about to lose a valuable source of vital pet supplies? Thankfully, we can reassure you that’s not the case.
We reached out to Petco, the parent company of Unleashed and a spokesperson told the Daily Press that the store was very much there to stay. So, how did this confusion arise? A spokesperson for the leasing and management agency, Santa Monica-based CBRE Retail Properties, explained that the building was remodeled following the 1994 Northridge earthquake. As such, from the perspective of a passer by, one could very easily believe that the whole parcel of land, from 14th Street to 14th Court is one, singularly-owned site. It isn’t.
The sign refers purely to the portion of the building that contains Unleashed together with Klassy Konnections/Lashing All Over The City beauty salon on the 14th Street side and it’s the second business that is leaving this site. Consequently, it’s that space that’s available to rent. However, the whole building is indeed for sale, but Unleashed would continue to remain in place even as per the terms of their agreed contract.
And that’s not all. Along the Wilshire Blvd side, the Acology health products store is staying put, but Santa Monica’s second recreational cannabis store is opening next door — to the left as you look at the store front — and next to that, by coincidence, it’s believed that a brand new smoke shop is set to open.
The second recreational cannabis store is operated by Harvest Trulieve, a result of the merger of Arizona-based Harvest Health & Recreation, Inc. and Florida-based Trulieve Cannabis Corp. in September 2021 to form the new company, valued at about $2.1 billion. Trulieve is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under “TRUL” and trades on the OTCQX market under “TCNNF.”
Back in June of last year, the first cannabis dispensary finally opened in the city of Santa Monica, more than a year and a half after the permit was granted in October 2021, six years after the application was requested in December 2017 and over 26 years since medical marijuana was made legal in the state of California. That dispensary is a branch of the Local Cannabis Company, which is owned by Massachusetts-based Calyx Peak and marks the first time the organization has opened an outlet west of Kansas City.
The request for applications ran from December 2017 through to February 2018 and saw over 21 different requests. A second dispensary, then known as Harvest of Santa Monica, was set to be situated at 1416 Wilshire Blvd was also approved, in January 2022, but it’s only now that we’re seeing some physical evidence of that coming to fruition.
“We’re hitting the same hurdles as him [Howard Keum, Co-Founder and CEO of Calyx Peak] and Santa Monica has been one of the most difficult places for us to get an establishment opened. We have other dispensaries that we’ve opened and it was nothing as hard as Santa Monica,” said Harvest Regional Manager Stephen, who also asked that we not print his last name.
The team behind Harvest say that they’re hoping to open by the end of March of this year and also hope to open with a full recreational permit, much like the Local Cannabis Company was finally granted at the end of November, last year.
The fact that Santa Monica’s only two cannabis dispensaries are so close together has nothing to do with Hotelling’s law, as Stephen says, “The city council only gave us a certain area that we could open in and we had no choice. We had a very, very, very limited area where we could actually open the shops and Howard also had no choice where he had to do it.”
“The City of Santa Monica will be making a lot of tax, just like the city of Los Angeles makes a lot of tax revenue from cannabis. And that’s I’m sure that’s one of the reasons that City Council’s looked to change [the permit] from medical to recreational and it will help the city of Santa Monica. That’s what they’re looking for, the benefits to the City of Santa Monica and I believe that’s why they went recreational,” Sam says.
The space offers about 1,000 square feet of showroom space and the Harvest team very much want to create a neighborhood look and feel. “We want this to be a kind of your local speakeasy pub for cannabis,” Stephen says, adding that while other outlets might have a more stylistically-themed aesthetic, “We wanted to turn that on its head and just make it a small neighborhood, with really engaging employees that make it feel like everyone here knows your name.”
Little is currently known about the rumored smoke shop coming next door and in a statement to the Daily Press, a spokesperson for the City said, “We do not [currently] have a business license application for a smoke shop and are verifying whether a smoke shop would be permitted in that location.”