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Date: 2/15/2021
HOLYOKE – Western Massachusetts residents will now have another option when deciding where to buy their recreational marijuana.
Southwick resident James Jaron, who previously lived in Holyoke, is the majority owner of Holyoke Cannabis. He said he’s also the owner of Zap Electric, a Longmeadow-based electric company and first became interested in opening a recreational marijuana dispensary after attending an investors meeting.
“Once I was there and listening, I thought ‘I could do this,’ and here I am,” he said.
Jaron said the process to open the dispensary, Holyoke Cannabis, began about three years ago. The first part of the process, he said, was finding a location. “At the time I lived in Holyoke, I lived on Carol Lane in Holyoke. I was local. The location was very attractive to me because it was a big mill building,” he said. “In cannabis, you have to have a landlord that doesn’t have a loan on the building. I met with the landlords and thought it was a great location, not too expensive, local.”
He said while he no longer lives in Holyoke, he’s lived in a variety of communities across Western Massachusetts throughout his life and felt strongly about opening a locally owned cannabis store. “Not many cannabis stores are owned locally. I put everything on the line, a lot of my savings,” he said.
After securing a location, he said he then had to get a host agreement with the city of Holyoke. Jaron said Mayor Alex Morse “was very receptive,” and it only took “two to three days” to get their host agreement finalized. They then had to go through a special permitting process, have drawings made up and then send the plans to the Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).
He said since the beginning of the process, he’d been working very closely with the police to ensure everything went right. “The city of Holyoke are just very concerned about making sure things go right here, we’re working very closely with the city’s police department, they have been awesome. They’ve just been great,” he said.
Jaron emphasized his desire to serve the local community as much as possible, including the hiring of local carpenters from On the Level Builders. The owners of the company, he said, were the first to purchase from the dispensary when it opened its doors for their soft opening on Feb. 11. “They are the first ones that purchased here. It’s really local people, local construction, being a member of the community,” he said.
Jaron said the soft opening was “amazing” and exceeded any expectations he had. “Our expectations were 12 to 15 customers, and we’ve had over 60 customers and haven’t hit rush hour traffic,” he said. The soft opening took place just days before the grand opening was scheduled to take place on Feb. 13.
Despite being just feet from another cannabis dispensary, Jaron said, he plans to stand apart by simply “having amazing people” and making sure things are done right. “It’s really about the right people behind the counter and making it right. We’re going to do the right thing, we’ve decided as a group to do the right thing,” he said. Another way they stood out, he said, was by being a dog-friendly location.
While he said he would “love” to work with growers in Western Massachusetts to keep everything local, there had recently been a shortage in product. “The growers usually have their own retail stores, and they can’t keep up so why would they sell to me,” he said.
Instead, he was working with “a lot of micro growers, lots of mom and pop shops,” to purchase products that cater to many people. “We cater to everyone,” he said.
In addition to offering products for everyone, he said that he and his staff had procedures and equipment in place to keep everyone safe during the pandemic. In addition to having a secure check-in system, he said they were also requiring employees and customers to wear masks, had hand sanitizer at several locations in the dispensary, had shields separating customers and employees would be enforcing social distancing.
While they were working on it, he said the dispensary would be opening online ordering in advance starting sometime during the week of Feb. 15 through their website https://holyokecannabis.com. In the meantime before online ordering was available, he said customers could call the store at 322-8611 to ensure their order was ready when they arrived. The dispensary at 380 Dwight St. is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.