This town’s budding ‘cannabis corridor’ could be getting competition.
A Michigan firm, Hempnotize New Jersey LLC, wants to open a weed shop in a vacant office building on Church Road near Fellowship Road, according to an application before Mount Laurel’s planning board.
That’s less than a mile from a cluster of three proposed dispensaries near Church Road’s intersection with Route 73.
Cannabis company NJ Green Care received the approval of the Mount Laurel Planning Board to set up a dispensary at the former Sage Diner on Route 73 during a meeting of the Planning Board held last Thursday.
Planning Board Member Adrienne Lewis cast the lone vote against NJ Green Care’s proposal.
The Planning Board’s approval is contingent upon many conditions, said Emily Weiner, an attorney for Mount Laurel Township, at the meeting.
A cannabis corridor could be coming to a busy stretch of highway here.
Township boards have approved applications from three cannabis dispensaries proposed for the 1100 block of Route 73.
The planning board on March 9 gave initial approval for an NJ Green Care dispensary at the former Sage Diner. The long-vacant building is at 1170 Route 73, a corner property at the Church Road intersection.
So when Sage Diner in Mount Laurel closed after Gus and Stella Roustas filed for bankruptcy in 2017, I'm sure a lot of regulars were sad. The building has sat empty ever since. It was purchased in April 2019 by Giannakaris Enterprises and if the plan ever was to renovate and reopen as a new diner you can bet a pandemic hitting less than a year later would have put that on a back burner.
So all these years later having sat vacant and unused the building that was Sage Diner off 73 might be coming back to life. But not as a diner. Not as a condo, either.