Highland Park City Councilman Khursheed Ash-Shafii couldn’t believe his eyes. After a judge struck down the city’s problematic recreational cannabis ordinance in July, a Michigan-based marijuana company went ahead and transformed a vacant building in the city into a dispensary anway.
Nar Cannabis paved a new parking lot, renovated and painted the building, and installed signs and lights on Victor Street near Woodward Avenue.
The building hasn’t opened yet, but Ash-Shafii says representatives from the company were handing out T-shirts at the city’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony last month.
Ash-Shafii is suspicious that something “sinister” is happening behind closed doors. To renovate a building and erect signs, the company would need various permits from the city.
“So why would you allow someone to come into this city, pull a permit for electrical, plumbing, construction, and signage for a dispensary you know is never going to open, unless you have something sinister going on in the background and you found a loophole to open the dispensary,” Ash-Shafii tells Metro Times. “A dispensary is not a cheap investment. You are talking about at least a $100,000 investment to get the building ready. Who spends that kind of money unless they were promised something?”
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