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BERKLEY — Two businesses in Berkley were approved for marijuana licenses at a recent City Council meeting.
At its Oct. 3 meeting, the City Council approved a marijuana business license for Seven Point Dispensing of Michigan LLC and a marijuana adult use retailer business license for Operation Grow LLC.
The license for Seven Point, which will be located at 28557 Woodward Ave., is the fourth marijuana license approved by Berkley. The city’s ordinance states that five recreational marijuana businesses can operate in town.
Seven Point was one of three organizations that tied for third place in its scoring application process that led Berkley to increase the number of licenses it offered from three to five. The other two businesses were Yellow Tail Ventures LLC and Attitude Wellness.
“We’re running to the near conclusion of this process that we set out three years ago, and with some lessons learned, we’re happy with the outcome here,” City Manager Matt Baumgarten said.
Representatives of Seven Point were in attendance for the council meeting, where they expressed their excitement about operating in Berkley.
Gabe Ruben, a partner with Seven Point, is a resident of Huntington Woods and a Berkley High School graduate who also runs two other businesses in the city.
“I’m ingrained in this community,” he said. “I love this city. It’s a great, wonderful city. We’re very excited that this is finally coming to fruition. It’s been a long three years, but we’re very excited to get started on the construction and add a tremendous amount of value to the city of Berkley.”
Asked when the business would start construction, CEO of Seven Point Brad Zerman stated that the business recently put down a deposit with an architect to start construction drawings.
“We’re just going to take it one step at a time, but we’re moving forward already, so, you know, we’re not going to waste any time,” he said.
The council voted 5-2 in favor of granting the license. The two no votes were Councilmen Steve Baker and Ross Gavin, who have voted in the past not to grant licenses to applications that were among the three that tied in the scoring process. Both voted no for Attitude Wellness, which will operate as Lume at 1949 12 Mile Road, when it was up for a license in June.
The other license that was approved was to Operation Grow, located at 2222 W. 11 Mile Road. Operating under the name “butter,” the business previously was approved for a license that allowed it to work as a medical marijuana dispensary.
Baumgarten said that, when Berkley was writing its marijuana ordinance, the state had just approved the allowance of adult-use recreational marijuana, but medical marijuana already was allowed. So the city allowed the option for any of the potential business licensees to move forward with medical marijuana only and then come back at a later time to add recreational, should it receive a license from the state.
“They have already received the go-ahead to move forward,” he said. “They have site plan approval, I believe they have their construction documents in hand at this point, permits have been approved, and so this is merely … changing their floor space to sell recreational marijuana in addition to the medical marijuana they’ve already received.”
The council unanimously approved the license for butter, which was the highest-scoring application in the city’s scoring process.
