Choice bud will return next year to commercial space in Hidden Valley after a five-year high-atus.
Pinal County Planning Manager Gilbert Olgin told InMaricopa today a special-use permit is all that stands between the county and getting the new pot business at 49237 W. Papago Road remodeled and running.
“By January we’re hoping to get board of supervisors’ approval and get the permit done,” Olgin said. “Once they get special-use permit approved after the rezone, then they can do tenant improvements to make changes on the inside.”
Owner Big Tree Equity plans to open a new Nirvana Center pot shop and hire a staff to operate it. Nirvana on its website says a Maricopa location is “coming soon.”
The proposed weed store would be located next door to Raceway Bar and Grill as part of that strip mall, the only shopping and dining south of the casino.
It will be the third pot shop at the location. Two previous shops, both medical and later recreational pot shops, Ponderosa Releaf dispensaries, operated there from 2015 to 2020.
“It is our understanding that the owners of the Releaf dispensary chose to move their license to another location,” according to Phoenix-based land and zoning law firm Silvyn & Lazarus, representing the new owner. “Operators are limited to the number of licenses they can have for dispensaries. If they find a new location, they must move a license they cannot just apply for another one.”
Law firm representatives conducted a neighborhood meeting at the Raceway Bar and Grill in February and records show five people notified within the required 1,200 feet of the location attended.
“The people in attendance were supportive of the project and stated that there is a need for this use in the area,” the law firm representative wrote to county officials. “They explained that they were very surprised when the previous dispensary closed and now have to travel long distances to obtain their medicine.”
Olgin said the rezoning was a matter of updating the existing commercial zoning to meet county zoning requirements. A special-use permit should be approved smoothly and swiftly because the location has been previously used for pot retailing twice before.
The project narrative said the hours of operation for the new store would be 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Nirvana Center will have appropriate security measures in place and will prepare and submit a security plan the complies with Pinal County and the Arizona Department of Health Services requirements with the application for a use permit, the narrative states.
Another pot store, the first located inside the Maricopa city limits, is under construction adjacent to but separate from Southbridge Marketplace, which will include Lowe’s Home Improvement Center and an Aldi grocery store on Honeycutt Avenue east of John Wayne Parkway.
Nirvana Center has several existing locations in Apache Junction, Florence, Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott and Flagstaff.
Nirvana is a subsidiary of Florida-based Trulieve, the largest chain of pot stores in Arizona, according to the U.S. SEC.
