Franklin Township

It’s another cannabis market win for Central Jersey.

Leaf Haus will have a grand-opening celebration Aug. 17, as it becomes the third legal weed shop to open to customers 21 and over in Somerset County.

The store is located at 900 Easton Ave, Suite 18 in Franklin Township’s Somerset Village shopping center, next to H&R Block.

Leaf Haus is a small store with a large product selection to choose from.

Among revenue sources, the borough expects to collect $400,000 in new funds from cannabis permit fees. While there are no public retail stores in the borough, the budget's revenues shows a new line item of $400,000 in cannabis fees.

Ascend has operated a medical marijuana growing facility near the intersection of Munsonhurst Road and Route 23 for several years and has received permission to expand into the adjacent former armory building to grow marijuana for sales into the public retail market.

A new marijuana dispensary in Somerset County has recently been approved to allow recreational cannabis for adults.

Bloc Dispensary, at 1075 Easton Ave., Somerset, officially opened for medical use only in December 2022. The dispensary was able to expand its cannabis offerings for recreational use as of March 2.

Unity Rd., the first national cannabis dispensary franchise in the United States, will open its first New Jersey recreational marijuana shop in the township in the first half of 2023.The shop site will be located in a strip mall at 441 Elizabeth Ave.

Dishen Patel, owner of the shop, has received approval from both the state and the township, to open the business.

Patel has spent the past decade in private equity investing in consumer-driven brands, including several franchise restaurants.

Big Plan Holdings Legacy Partners (BPH-LP), a subsidiary of Nashville, Tennessee-based Big Plan Holdings (BPH), is pleased to announce the acquisition of a strategically significant property located in Franklin, New Jersey, expanding their reach and that of Ascend Wellness Holdings (AWH), one of the nation’s largest multistate operating (‘MSO’) cannabis companies, in the process.

The acquisition has been appropriately timed to further embolden the New Jersey cannabis marketplace, which, since recent deregulatory measures were implemented, has begun to flourish Statewide.

The township council further solidified its stance on legal cannabis on Tuesday, passing an ordinance to endorse the New Jersey adult-use cannabis program for Franklin residents.

The law permits "the safe and appropriate siting of facilities for cannabis retail and delivery businesses within the Township’s Neighborhood Business (NB), General Business (GB), Hamilton Business District (HBD), and Retail District Overlay (RDO) zones."

The Borough Council did not object to the expansion of a medical marijuana-growing facility in town at Tuesday's meeting.

Ascend New Jersey, LLC, at 24 Munsonhurst Road, will look into expanding its marijuana operation to the adjoining property, the former home of the Littell Community Center which was previously an armory vacated by the state National Guard Armory.

The business, Holistic NJ, will also have the opportunity to sell recreational weed to those 21 years and older once the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission establishes the rules for that.

But in the meantime, Holistic NJ will set up shop in a Jiffy Road warehouse, where it will grow and process medical marijuana, said Vincent Dominach, the township’s Economic Development Director.

The company is looking for a site to set up a retail shop to sell the medical cannabis, he said.

As the Aug. 21 deadline to decide on legal marijuana gets closer, towns in Somerset County are banning or allowing — mostly banning — cannabis businesses, with some enacting penalties as high as $200 for smoking weed in public.