White Center Now: The blog about White Center

A new medical-marijuana dispensary has just opened in downtown White Center – on the lower level of the White Center building that once housed a short-lived medical-marijuana “lounge.” The lower rear entry of the building on the southwest corner of 16th/98th is the doorway for USC 2. (“USC” also was the name of the dispensary that was briefly open in the southernmost block of Delridge, just a few blocks away from this location, and now – according to one online directory – is in South Seattle.) USC 2 has yet to respond to our note with a few followup questions; with its opening in the building that previously was home to The Wall, The Hang Around, and GAME Lounge, there are now three marijuana businesses within about a block of each other on 16th in downtown WC – Herban Legends, the Northwest Cannabis Market, and this one. Their status has not been affected by the passage of Initiative 502, which requires the state to come up with rules for growers and sellers by next November, at which time it’ll take applications for people interested in entering the cannabis business.

Just in case you are of the “I won’t believe it till I see it” school, regarding the GAME Collective medical-marijuana lounge making good on its plan to close its short-lived downtown White Center spot, these signs are proof … a for-sale sign we noted on the east side of the building, and a small “we’ve moved” note on the door.

It’s been three weeks now since DEA agents showed up at the lounge as part of a series of searches around the region at establishments they claimed were suspected of drug trafficking and money laundering. Last week, we reported what they seized.

While state law allows medical-marijuana use, any and all marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, which trumps state/local laws if and when the feds choose to enforce theirs. This location, by the way, was GAME’s lounge for a little over seven months; the Hang Around closed about a year before GAME moved in; its precedessor was The Wall.

Story and photo by Deanie Schwarz
Reporting for White Center Now

Another White Center medical-marijuana patient collective will be opening next weekend – Saturday, September 24 – at 9640 16th SW. Northwest Cannabis Market (NCM), a private cooperative of patient-farmers and collective gardens, will be the third medical marijuana venue in White Center.

Managed by Michael Keysor, the NCM cooperative formed in April of this year with plans to operate as a weekend-only patient-farmer market in Everett, according to Keysor. That city, however, took action to put the brakes on medical marijuana. NCM began a search for a new “market” location outside of Snohomish County that was more “friendly to patients” and to “provide safe, secure access” to their medicine.

He said rent costs were prohibitive in Seattle, but the White Center space next door to Uncle Mike’s BBQ provided the square footage needed (3,900 sq. ft.) for the cannabis patient/farmers and patient/medible providers to set up tables, farmers-market-style. A testing area for patient members to sample the varieties of cannabis offered by the farmers will also be incorporated into the “market.” However, Keysor said that this is not like the lounge/socializing model which G.A.M.E. Collective (one-half block south at 98th/16th) operates with. He anticipates members/patients will be in and out of the market within 20 to 30 minutes.

The hours will be limited to Saturday and Sunday only, from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with uniformed, armed, security on site through a private security firm. Keysor thought it was possible that the hours will be shortened during the winter months, but also that they hoped to eventually be open three days a week at some point. The members must provide proof of their tamper-proof medical-marijuana patient cards at the door, along with ID. Non-member patients with paperwork will be able to become members at the door. According to Keysor, this collective is only the second one in the country to use the “farmers market” collective model. The first, he said, is the Cannabis Farmers Market, which runs periodically in Tacoma and Seattle. Based on that group’s market, Keysor believes NCM will have 100+ patients over the weekend at about 10 patients per hour, but currently there are only eight or nine vendors committed for the opening. He anticipated there could be up to 25, however, as the collective network has about 600 members currently.

Keysor told WCN at the end of last week that he had not yet met with any members of the King County Sheriff’s Office and assumed that they would come to him, but that perhaps he would stop by the Storefront Office to introduce himself. Keysor also thought his business would be good for the neighborhood, particularly the food and restaurant establishments. However, he didn’t want to have his photo published; the picture atop this story is the storefront where he plans to open.

(Photos by Deanie Schwarz for WCN)
What had been The Wall and then the Hang Around is now Green Piece, West Seattle medical-marijuana purveyor Brionne Corbray‘s newest of of four nonprofit locations of his GAME Collective operation. WCN contributor Deanie Schwarz reports that Corbray’s new location opened early only for today, in honor of 4/20, a reference to not just today’s date, but also the counterculture code-name for marijuana.

Corbray says this is a “lounge” model, distinctive from medical marijuana “dispensaries,” patterned after the only existing, known lounge/cafe for medical marijuana in the U.S., the Cannabis Cafe in Portland.

Deanie reports that collective members will not only be able to obtain medical marijuana and medibles (food items made with marijuana), they will be smoking/medicating and socializing at the lounge, which has just undergone more than $50,000 in renovations and cleanup work. More to come on both this operation and the in-the-works Herban Legends dispensary about a block north. (Legal side note: These businesses are not authorized under state law. There had been some hope a state law to license and regulate them would become official this year, but after it passed both houses of the Legislature, it’s now in limbo because Governor Gregoire says she’s worried about the effects of signing it.)