A low-slung building on the outskirts of downtown Morenci still retains the markers of its former life as a soft-serve ice cream shop. Walk-up windows, blue picnic tables for crowds of kids, even a menu tucked away in a back room: two Coney dogs, tater tots and a drink for $6.

But children are no longer allowed inside the building and the ice cream machines have given way to gleaming glass cases. Now it’s an adult-use marijuana dispensary located in the center of small-town Morenci’s cannabis business area, and business is booming.

“We’re making our due diligence to make sure this is going to happen for the community,” said Melvyn Mina, regional manager for Stateline Remedii, as employees packaged marijuana flower in preparation for adult-use sales they’d launch the next day. “We’re very excited. This is a historic moment.”

Packed with four dispensaries and abutted by 65 acres of land for grow operations, locals have given the area a number of nicknames — “cannabis cove,” and “the green zone,” among them — and its upended life in this town of just over 2,000 people along the Ohio border.

After heated local debate, Morenci agreed to allow medical marijuana facilities in 2017 and recreational marijuana shortly after it was legalized in 2018. Just over a year later, it is one of only a handful of towns in Michigan with adult-use marijuana shops, well ahead of larger cities like Grand Rapids and Lansing, which have yet to approve any licenses. Nearly 1,500 other cities and towns across the state, most small municipalities like Morenci, have preemptively banned the industry as they sit back and see how it affects other communities.

So far, the relationship between Morenci and its pot industry seems symbiotic.

City officials say the money it’s brought in has been a game-changer for a town that long struggled economically, all without spiking crime or overtaxing the town’s tiny police force.

Longtime local residents are learning to live alongside their new business neighbors, whose owners live near Michigan’s major cities or out of state. The stores pull in unprecedented levels of traffic and the air is periodically thick with the stench of marijuana anywhere near the business district, which irks nearby homeowners. But their proprietors are friendly and the city budget is swelling, so most residents are nonplussed.

Marijuana business owners are at a distinct advantage: They’re among the first in Michigan to sell a long-sought-after product and they’re right on the border with a state with few real competitors due to a ban on recreational use in Ohio, though that may soon change.