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A medical marijuana dispensary is opening in Five Points on a very busy corner.

Kelsi Hasden talks about the details with WJCT News Director Jessica Palombo in The Jaxson on WJCT.

MedMen Enterprises of Los Angeles, the country’s biggest medical marijuana provider, has signed a lease to open a 6,000-square-foot dispensary in the former Fans and Stoves space at 1059 Park St. in Five Points.

Miami developer Jeff Morr purchased the building in 2016, and Fans & Stoves Antique Mall subsequently moved to a 6,500-square-foot space at 800 Lomax St. Morr also owns the adjacent building at 813 Lomax St., which includes tenants Copper Closet, Ribault Bakery and APB Sneaker + Apparel Boutique. Matthew Clark, Senior Vice President at Prime Realty, represented both parties on the leasing transaction.

The proposed storefront façade is under review for a Certificate of Appropriateness by the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission. It includes a bold red facade that would stretch from new canopies to be installed along Park Street and continue around the corner to replace the Shaun Thurston mural currently adorning the building along Lomax Street.

MedMen entered the Florida cannabis market in 2018 through the $53 million acquisition of Eustis, Florida-based Treadwell Nursery’s medical marijuana treatment center license. Along with Treadwell’s 5-acre cultivation facility in Central Florida, the acquisition included Treadwell’s existing retail storefronts in Ft. Lauderdale, Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, St. Petersburg and Key West. The publicly-traded company trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the ticker MMEN.

See images of other MedMen stores at The Jaxson.

Variety Magazine calls the MedMen franchise “the Apple Store or Starbucks of retail weed” and describes the interiors as featuring “dazzling in-store displays, with iPads identifying the various weed strains, housed in clear plastic that allow consumers to examine the buds through a magnifying glass and conduct their own sniff.”

Florida, the third-most-populous state in the U.S. and home to the largest elderly community in the nation, is seen as a high-growth adult use medical cannabis market. According to Arcview, medical cannabis sales are estimated to be approximately $1.4 billion by 2021.

But Florida is a tough market for cannabis companies, due to laws governing the sale and distribution of medical marijuana. That’s because Florida is what’s known as a vertically-integrated market, meaning the same provider must grow, process and sell its own marijuana and cannot distribute to third-party retailers nor purchase from third-party agriculture producers. MedMen now holds one of only 13 active medical marijuana licenses in the state.

“Our entry into Florida demonstrates our growing national footprint,” said Adam Bierman, MedMen chief executive and co-founder, at the time of the Treadwell acquisition. “Our real estate team is hard at work preparing to put MedMen branded stores in the most coveted locations in Florida – locations in highly desirable and defensible market areas with high foot traffic and proximity to popular brand retailers.”

One of those locations will now include the Five Points commercial district, and joins Atlanta-based Surterra Wellness that operates a dispensary in the nearby Brooklyn neighborhood.

Pending approvals, MedMen’s Five Points location is expected to open by the end of the 3rd quarter of 2019.