In the early 1900s, the Chadakoin River, nestled into the western corner of New York State, powered Jamestown’s mills and factories, which in turn pumped out crescent wrenches, furniture and voting machines – and positioned the city as a well-established manufacturing hub.
But in the mid-20th century, the businesses began to leave. Factories along the water’s edge grew old and frail. And for the next 60 years, Jamestown’s population declined.
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Then, in March of 2021, New York State passed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, promising a regulated, licensed and equitable cannabis industry – an opportunity that Jamestown’s newly elected leadership welcomed with open arms.
“We were one of the first cities in New York State to say, ‘Come look at us, come look at the city of Jamestown, let us be your place to develop,’” said Eddie Sundquist, the 33-year old Democratic mayor whose administration has been lauded by the city’s cannabis community.
Sundquist’s vision, embraced by his staff and supported through outreach and education, has invigorated the town’s entrepreneurs, some of whom have already received conditional grow licenses, or are actively seeking retail licenses.
Today, they are busy renovating stores and old factories, engaging with their community and meeting regularly with city administrators to position themselves – and their town – as a thriving cannabis ecosystem in New York.
A first-round grower
After Kerry Trammel’s husband was arrested and served time in prison nearly 10 years ago for operating a medical dispensary in North Carolina, followed shortly thereafter by their youngest daughter being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, the couple began reevaluating their next steps, Trammel said.
“How can we help people, where do we become advocates, and where’s the best place to advocate for people who need this product,” she told NY Cannabis Insider.
That’s how they ended up in Jamestown, where Trammel opened The Releaf Market, a CBD store, in 2019.
At the time, those kinds of shops didn’t exist in the city, she said, and “everyone was intrigued.”
“We did a lot of education, a lot of teaching people how to use products that are safer for them than narcotics,” she said.
“We saw a lot of people coming in off the streets who were addicted to other products, who started using ours to combat whatever they were dealing with to stay off of the harmful drugs.”
Trammel eventually presented to the city council about the ways Jamestown could benefit from embracing cannabis. For instance, she said, because the city owns its own public utilities, it has significantly lower rates of electricity than other NY municipalities – which would be a huge advantage for an industry that consumes a vast amount of power.
“So they have the power to supply a lot of buildings that have been broken down or not used to the capacity that they need to be – they can fill those spaces with cultivation sites, and turn the city around,” she said.
“It’s my hope that these buildings get taken up, people start coming back to the city, and start using the resources that we have here,” she told NY Cannabis Insider.
Trammel received her license to grow hemp in 2019 and became one of the first in the state to receive a conditional adult-use cultivator license for recreational marijuana from NY’s Cannabis Control Board in April.
As of December, she is one of just two businesses in Jamestown to receive the license, and one of four in all of Chautauqua County.
She said her phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.
“‘Do I have cannabis, where’s the closest dispensary, how do you get there, what’s the address,’” she said. “A lot of people were able to come out of the shadows – they didn’t have to hide anymore.”
Trammel was operating out of a nondescript building on the outskirts of Jamestown in early October when this interview was conducted. A small staff was helping her tend to hundreds of plants that dried lazily in the breeze. The base of a massive piano lay in the center of another room, a relic from an old tenant, too heavy to remove.
What surprised her the most about getting into recreational marijuana?
“The cost,” she said. “If the word ‘cannabis’ comes up in any conversation when you’re going to buy something, it’s going to triple. People assume because you’re dealing in cannabis, you’re dealing with a large sum of money.”
That’s not the case, she said.
Right now, The Releaf Market is spending all its time and money on establishing itself: making sure the company is up to code, that they’ll have supply in the future, and that safety and security are paramount.
“A lot of our income is going out the door because we can’t sell a product yet,” she said. “Until those dispensaries get open, we’re just sitting on a product.”
Broken windows
From the outside, the five-story brick building on Crescent Street appears nearly empty.
Old, heavy paned windows adorn the top two floors – the kind with ripples, warps and indentations that are the result of old-school fabrication methods. There are high ceilings, freight elevators and giant metal doors in the stairwells, along with fragments of century-old newspaper clippings on the walls.
Inside, Ashley Baron and Ryan Peterson of Snowbelt Cannabis are readying half a floor for cultivation.
“The real estate here is very affordable and plentiful,” said Peterson, Snowbelt’s cultivation manager.
“So, our overhead costs of production are going to be lower here in Jamestown than many other places.” As a result, the pair can grow high-quality cannabis, “but we’ll be able to stay competitive with it” by minimizing those costs, he said.
Peterson and Snowbelt’s owner, Baron, are among the few so far who have taken advantage of the town’s existing infrastructure to enter the cannabis marketplace. They’ve got 5,000 square feet to work with, and another 4,000 they plan to take over if and when they receive a license from the state.
As cannabis consumers and advocates, they saw the opportunity to grow in Jamestown as a “no-brainer.”
In addition to the low cost for real estate and electricity, Peterson and Baron said, the proximity to Ohio and Pennsylvania is another benefit.
“Hopefully New York gets it going before they do,” Baron joked.
Aside from the costs, working with their local government, they said, has been “awesome.”
“I haven’t seen anybody else be so pro-cannabis,” Baron said. Other municipalities may not have opted-out, “but nobody’s doing anything,” she said.
“Jamestown’s like, ‘we want everything here: bring packaging, bring it all here; legacy growers come out, let’s all talk about this,” she said.
With all the incentives, NY Cannabis Insider asked the pair why they thought there haven’t been similar efforts to bring other industries into the small community.
“I think it’s the New York stigma of tax – the big tax state – that scares a lot of manufacturers away,” Peterson said. “And at the end of the day, all these furniture factories left because they went overseas, they’re not coming back.”
“But there’s definitely room for other industries,” he said. “I’m surprised there aren’t more tech companies and online businesses here.”
The mayor’s office
It’s nearly impossible in Jamestown to hide from the eyes of Lucille Ball.
Though the celebrated actress only lived in the city for a short time, her likeness is plastered across buildings, memorialized in statues (one a terrifying tribute), and enshrined in a museum downtown.
City Hall sits two blocks away from the Lucy Desi Museum, and though the town’s mayor is proud of the actress’ association with the community, he’d like to see his city known for more than its ties with the past.
“We’ve seen a lot of manufacturing, a lot of different companies leave the area,” Sundquist said. “But when New York State decided it wanted to legalize cannabis, that was an opportunity for us.”
The city wanted to create good-quality jobs and make use of vacant warehouse spaces, he said, but also recognized that there were some who were totally against the idea of embracing cannabis, thinking it would only bring about more crime.
“But the reality was that cannabis was being legalized. So, no matter how you rode the wave, it was legal: it was legal to possess, it was legal to use, and was soon to be legal to sell,” Sundquist said.
“So we said, ‘you know what, let’s find a way to make it work.’”
Here’s what Jamestown did:
After studying the MRTA, the city piggybacked on the regulatory criteria when developing their own that fit within their existing economic development plan – enough to stay within their zoning plans and allow them to exercise control.
They made their efforts transparent and highly visible, in part by building a landing page on the city’s website – Grow with Jamestown – that advertised its initiative and welcomed future business owners to send in their contact information and plans, and connect with city staff.
“That’s really where we saw the opportunity to start to develop those relationships very early on,” said Crystal Surdyck, the city’s director of development.
In addition to a lot of public outreach, including an April “Grow Jamestown After Dark” event at a local brewery, the mayor and his staff examined the tools at their disposal.
“As the government, we can either make it easier or harder for a business to operate,” Sundquist said. “Whether that’s through zoning, or whether that’s through permitting.”
The team probed ways to make it easier for a cannabis business to operate in the city: Could they get a fire marshal on board to work with these businesses beforehand; could they pre-permit spaces; could they do everything in their power to get businesses open and operating within days of being licensed by the state.
“So, we said move all the levers that we can to position a company, a business, an organization, a person, in the best possible spot so that they can hit the ground running from day one,” Sundquist said.
And not just for cannabis businesses.
“Looking at those ancillary businesses that we’re going to need to really develop a self-sustainable ecosystem that supports the cannabis industry, but is also supportive of other industries, as well,” said Surdyck.
Most of the grant funding Jamestown has available for businesses comes from the federal government, Surdyck said, so they’re not able to tap into those resources for cannabis entrepreneurs (because marijuana remains a Schedule I drug).
So they got creative.
The city has pulled people together to facilitate connections and make them feel like a small team, she said, in addition to hosting workshops and other free resources aimed at entrepreneurs. They’ve also been readying themselves for federal legalization – to be able to “hit go” if and when that happens.
The main hurdle so far, city staff told NY Cannabis Insider, is a lack of information coming from the Office of Cannabis Management.
“Like most government agencies, there are times when they’ll tell you information and there are times when they won’t,” the mayor said, and that makes it very difficult for a city to plan.
For example, in late August, the head of the OCM made a comment that marked a significant shift in the anticipated timeline of the state’s rollout of its marijuana marketplace – confusing hopeful business cannabis operators across the state.
“Information like that, if there’s not real transparency, or if there’s confusion at that level, it puts everyone here in a tizzy, because they don’t know what to expect, or what to plan for,” said Stephanie Wright, Jamestown’s economic development coordinator.
What does success look like in five years?
“I think of a craft industry, when it comes to cannabis,” Wright said. “That we have our micro-growers who are here and they are successful; that we have our dispensaries that are classy, that attract people to want to spend time in Jamestown.”
Sundquist paused before answering.
“When I look at Jamestown, I say we are creating a new industry here,” he said.
“And although it’s been tried and true in many states, New York is still very nascent, very brand new to this industry. And if we could show the rest of the state positive ways to do it, and be a laboratory – an experiment ground – for how the industry continues to evolve, that’s where I see Jamestown in the next five to ten years.”
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