Entrepreneurs banking on NJ Gov. Phil Murphy’s campaign promise to legalize marijuana in the Garden State are starting to feel burned.
Shergoh Alkilani, a real estate developer based in Cliffside Park, said he’s invested roughly $1 million in a pot manufacturing facility in Bergen County — with nothing to show for it and no sense of when it might open, if ever.
Alkilani, whose Alkova Companies focuses on urban development projects, is under contract to purchase an existing manufacturing facility for around $10 million that he would use for the cultivation, production and sale of cannabis, he told The Post.
But with the marijuana legalization measure being “tossed around like a baked potato,” he has been unable to close on the deal.
That’s despite having already spent more than “a half-million dollars” on lawyers, consultants and “due diligence” — in addition to the more than $500,000 he’s spent trying to procure one of the coveted licenses required to grow, process and sell marijuana in the state, he told The Post.