The first legal recreational cannabis stores in Grand Forks are nearing the green light the open. Grand Forks Cannabis, owned by Chuck Varabioff, is set to open on Oct. 1, and owners James McKenna and Kyle McEwan are aiming to have full shelves and open the doors at Baggy’s Cannabis Store on Oct. 5.
Baggy’s Cannabis Store is a joint venture for McKenna and McEwan, who were quick to jump into the legal cannabis market in Canada.
“Days after legalization,” said McKenna, “we started coming up with a name.” They settled on Baggy’s, and applied for the name hardly a week later. Baggy’s became a company by December in in the new year, McKenna and McEwan sent away their documents to begin the approval process.
Baggy’s and Grand Forks Cannabis may be among the first legal recreational cannabis stores in town, but they come in the wake of a line of longstanding cannabis growers and culture in the region. More recently, legal cannabis growing facilities have been popping up throughout the Boundary. In the east, Christina Lake Cannabis has applied to grow outdoors on 32 acres, while other growers past Midway and Rock Creek are also entering the field.
McKenna and McEwan finally learned that they’d cleared all the hurdles laid out by federal, provincial and local governments on Aug. 1, even though they’d gotten their hopes up as early as March, when the city approved them for a business license.
“We were telling everyone that we would be ready by four-twenty,” said McKenna, and then they heard similar answers from various government employees: “Yeah, that probably won’t be possible.”
“Soon after that?” the pair asked.
“Just wait,” McKenna recalled being told.
In the meantime, McKenna, who works a day job with Unifab and McEwan, a lumber yard manager, waited out the clock at work.
“It was a lot of thinking over eight months,” McKenna said. “They won’t let you do anything else, so you just sit there, planning.”
But when Aug. 1 came, it turned into all hands on deck.
Along with friends and family, the business partners have been putting in overtime at their store location to get it up to snuff for building inspectors and regulations that outline security requirements, along with their own aesthetic designs.
Shooting for a steampunk look – dark with rusty metal, exposed features like beams and cables, McKenna and McEwan are aiming for a store that looks much different than the Apple Store look-alikes found in Vancouver.
Scorched wood slabs line the horseshoe counter in the store. The wood, McKenna said, came from trees burned in the Rock Creek fire and were milled locally by Son Ranch.
Just like the wood, the Baggy’s owners say that they want to source their cannabis locally, though they will still need to order through the central government hub.
@jensenedwJensen.edwards@grandforksgazette.caLike us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
