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ROCKLAND − For a small town, Rockland is emerging as a big player in the region’s cannabis economy.
GreenRock Cannabis opened Rockland’s third marijuana store this month in an industrial zone tucked into the town’s northeast corner. Less than a mile away, CannaVana, the South Shore’s first recreational marijuana store, opened in July 2020, and the following February, Health Circle opened in the same district. Another business, called 2 Buds, has signed an agreement with the town but has yet to open.
Rockland Town Manager Doug Lapp said Rockland is attractive to the industry for a number of reasons. Residents embraced cannabis relatively early, while some neighboring towns and cities instituted bans that were later overturned. Some still stand.
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“Geography is in our favor,” he said. Close to Boston and centrally located on the South Shore, Rockland has zoning bylaws that allow marijuana stores right off Route 3’s Exit 35.
“People can quickly get off the highway, do their business, and go home,” Lapp said.
He said Rockland also tries to make the permitting process as transparent and efficient as possible.
GreenRock owner Rob Lally also cited geography when explaining his choice of Rockland for his newest venture.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s location, location, location,” Lally said.
The new, 5,000-square-foot building sits 100 yards from Route 3 on Hingham Street, next to The Home Depot and the Rockland Park and Ride lot.
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Rockland’s geography not only had a commercial appeal for Lally, but personal appeal as well. His great-grandfather, Angelo Tedeschi, emigrated from Naples, Italy, in the early 1920s and began delivering imported Italian groceries out of his Rockland home on Belmont Street.
Lally’s grandfather, Ralph Tedeschi, escaped captivity during World War II and returned home to open Tedeschi’s Supermarket on Market Street in Rockland. Benefitting from the post-war boom, he opened six locations between Braintree and Plymouth before selling to Stop & Shop in 1961.
In the early 1970s, the family business acquired Curtis Compact Food Stores, which were rebranded as Tedeschi Food Shops, a chain of nearly 200 convenience stores mostly in southeastern Massachusetts. That company was sold to 7-Eleven in 2015.
In 2012, Lally was an early investor in Maine’s second-ever casino, Oxford Casino, which was sold to Churchill Downs for $160 million less than a year later.
“It was that regulated environment that got me into cannabis,” Lally said.
He co-founded a business in Nevada off the Las Vegas strip called Cultivate, which carried out marijuana production, processing and retail operations. He brought the company to Massachusetts, starting in Leicester and then expanding into Uxbridge, Framingham and Worcester. The Cultivate brand was sold to Cresco, a large multistate operator in the cannabis industry, for $158 million in 2021.
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With experience and the money earned from his earlier ventures, Lally is returning home to a crowded market.
“That’s great for the consumer,” Lally said. “The consumer wants a large product selection. This will allow them to have that. We’re concerned about it, but we think we have the best location.”
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Town officials are concerned about the viability of the businesses as competition increases.
Lapp said more and more stores could saturate the market and harm the businesses already operating in Rockland. The town gets paid a percentage of the businesses’ sales through a local tax, and if the businesses aren’t thriving, the town’s cut goes down.
At present, there is no limit on how many marijuana stores can open within town limits. On May 1, Rockland residents will vote on a town meeting article that would cap the number at the four already approved. The idea was brought to the board of selectmen by Lapp.
“If we allow too many dispensaries to open in Rockland, we could oversaturate the market,” Lapp said in an email.
He said the town meeting article seeks to avoid a scenario in which Rockland’s marijuana stores are forced to compete intensely against each other, an idea that followed the oversaturation of the markets in Colorado and Northampton.
The small Massachusetts city of 29,000 − about 10,000 more than Rockland − let 12 stores open between 2018 and 2022. Revenues have dropped about a third from their peak, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reports, and revenue to the town has dropped by $500,000 since its $1.64 million peak in 2020. Northampton voted to cap the number of cannabis businesses at 12 this year.
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Reach Peter Blandino at pblandino@patriotledger.com.
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