Plainfield

Queen City Origin Story

The smell of weed was in the air on Thursday afternoon as Queen City Remedies joined the City of Plainfield to commemorate Plainfield's newest business, its first marijuana dispensary, located at 1353 South Avenue.

Queen City Remedies is only the 7th purely recreational dispensary to open in the state of New Jersey, where around 70% of municipalities have opted out of letting these businesses into town. This includes many of Plainfield's neighbors.

The city's first adult use cannabis dispensary will open to customers 21 years or older on Thursday, September 7. The Queen City Dispensary is located at 1353 South Avenue. You can visit the dispensary's website here.

Mayor Adrian Mapp will join the ribbon cutting ceremony, along with City Council President Charles McRae and Director of Economic Development Zenobia Fields. The ceremony will start at 4pm, and doors should open at 4:20pm, a nod to the product that will be sold.

The first recreational marijuana dispensary in the city is ready to welcome customers.

Queen City Dispensary at 1353 South Ave. is scheduled to open Sept. 7 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 p.m.

The dispensary, which has adopted the city's nickname, has close ties to Plainfield. One of the company's founders was born and raised in the city. And a member of the dispensary's management was the director of the preschool formerly at the South Avenue site. The dispensary is looking toward creating more than 30 new jobs for the local community.

Three marijuana stores and a large marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facility will be opening in the city.

The stores, known as adult use dispensaries, which are different than medical marijuana dispensaries, will be opening on Front Street, South Avenue and Park Avenue.

The cultivation and manufacturing facility, owned by Clade9 New Jersey, will occupy 137,423 square feet, about the size of 2 ½ football fields, in the former Mack Truck plant on West Front Street.

It seemed appropriate, as one board member remarked heading to the parking lot after adjournment, that the two applicants who appeared before the Plainfield Planning Board Thursday did so on April 20, or 420. The board voted in favor of preliminary and final site plan approval for both a cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility, as well as a retail location on South Avenue near Terrill Road.

The cultivation facility will be located at 1309-1645 West Front Street, encompassing over 130,000 sq. feet.

A California firm will be returning to the Planning Board this month for approval to use the former Mack Trucks building on West Front Street as a cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility.

Clade9, based in California with a local office in Basking Ridge, received unanimous approval in October to use 17,000 square feet of the building for cannabis cultivation and manufacturing. That approval was conditioned on the firm obtaining approval from the state Cannabis Cultivation Commission.

A massive marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facility has been proposed in Plainfield, according to a recent article by mycentraljersey.com.

Clade9 New Jersey — a California-based firm that grows and and manufactures medical marijuana — will appear before Plainfield's Planning Board on Oct. 6 with a proposal to create the cannabis cultivation facility in the former Mack Truck factory on West Front Street between Rock and Clinton Avenues.

The city is again partnering with Union College to offer a 15-hour training course on how to get entry-level jobs in the state's growing cannabis industry.

The online course, which will be held 6 to 9 p.m. on five Mondays from Sept. 12 to Oct. 10, is the third time the NJ Cannabis Certified program has partnered with Plainfield and the college.

The city has approved up to three retail marijuana businesses here and up to four other non-retail weed businesses in the light industrial zone.

The City Council on Monday unanimously approved two ordinances related to recreational marijuana businesses.

The first allows for all six classes of recreational cannabis businesses after obtaining a state license, while the second, set at creating a new revenue stream, imposes a city cannabis transfer tax fixed at 2% on all sales or transfers of products from any of the cannabis establishments located in the city.