Pot lounges will light up West Hollywood scene
LOS ANGELES West Hollywood is betting on a new kind of nightlife: cannabis bars.
Applications for the city’s pot lounges were due Thursday and some of the best known names in the Los Angeles hospitality scene are vying to get in on the action.
The stakes are high. West Hollywood is one of the first cities in the country to introduce these kinds of licences, and the winners will be allowed to create the equivalent of alcohol-fuelled social bars for cannabis users — sans booze. Eight licences are up for grabs for lounges that offer edible cannabis only, and eight more will be awarded to locations where consumers will be able to eat, drink, vape or smoke the plant as they please.
The city — known for its nightlife — joins others in California, including San Francisco and Oakland, in distributing licences for pot-friendly social spaces. Pot use is otherwise prohibited in public areas, according to the city’s website.
West Hollywood expected to receive about 100 applications by the deadline of 11:59 p.m., according to Jackie Rocco, business development manager for the city. Applicants can submit for multiple kinds of licences, she said.
All United LLC — which includes the forces behind some of L.A.’s most popular nightclubs — is one of the groups applying for a spot.
All United planned to submit applications for four kinds of licences: one for an on-site consumption area for smoking, vaping and ingestion; one for a medical dispensary; one for an adult-use dispensary; and one for a delivery service.
Two of the group’s members, Markus Molinari and Tony LaPenna, are partners at H.Wood Group, which runs trendy L.A. neighbourhood haunts. Priscilla Vilchis and her team also is involved. She previously won cannabis licences in Las Vegas and in Lynwood, Calif.
The range of relevant professional experience — including hospitality and cannabis — is an asset for the team’s application, Vilchis said in an emailed statement. “Our team recognizes that our diversity is our greatest strength,” she said.
The legal U.S. cannabis industry is expected to reach US$75 billion by 2030, up from US$6 billion in 2016, according to investment bank Cowen & Co. The plant is legal for recreational use in nine U.S. states and for medicinal use in 21 more. In California, state and local tax revenue could exceed US$1 billion a year by the mid-2020s, according to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.The May 31 application deadline is the first step in a seven-part approval process, according to the West Hollywood website.
The very earliest that lounges could open is likely the end of this year, Rocco said.