Cannabis dispensary marks first anniversary

Crime not an issue but political fallout, lawsuit linger

By THANE GRAUEL

It’s been a year since the recreational cannabis dispensary Purple Plains opened on Westchester Avenue, and by all accounts it has not been a blight on Scotts Corners.

That was a fear voiced by some when learning in 2023 and 2024 that the business was coming to town,  on the outskirts of the business district. There is no evidence the store has been a magnet for criminal types and the incidents they can cause.

Rather, the business has instead served its customers — who come from around Westchester and nearby Connecticut — quietly and without incident. Pound Ridge police report that there have been no calls or complaints involving 32 Westchester Ave.

Pound Ridge Business Association President Lisa Miller said Purple Plains has been a good neighbor.

“We were, as an organization, happy they came to Pound Ridge,” she said of Purple Plains. “I think it’s a positive that they’re in Pound Ridge.”

“In anything today, people need to get their facts and information correct. There’s been no incidents, the riffraff has not come in as many people quoted,” she said of some people’s initial fears. “It’s a nice establishment and a nice business to have within our community.”

The operators of Purple Plains did not return calls for comment.

While crime has not been an issue, how a cannabis dispensary was able to open here in the first place is a question that has not gone away. 

A lawsuit filed by a local man challenging how the town board handled the cannabis dispensary’s rollout is smoldering in New York state Supreme Court. In it, John E. Nathan alleges the town board, unlike all surrounding towns, did not hold a public hearing to hear the citizenry’s views on whether dispensaries should be allowed after the state legalized them. 

Pound Ridge did not opt out.

Instead, Nathan alleges in his complaint filed in August 2024, the town board had discussions, sought legal input and made decisions outside of the public’s view, and then let the clock run down on the state’s opt-out deadline, Dec. 31, 2001.

That, Nathan says, violated the New York Open Meetings Law and deprived the populace of a chance to express their opinions.

An in-court hearing with oral arguments is scheduled for May 14.

Still upset with the process

TJ Tarateta was one person who had voiced concerns. He said that at the time, there were reports about dispensaries on Long Island and in Massachusetts that had armed security guards on the premises. 

“That was an issue that was of concern to me at the time, I don’t think that has come into play,” he said Wednesday. “There was some concern about whether it would really boost the tax base, because we were supposed to take a revenue share of the taxes that were collected through the dispensary.”

He said the revenue-sharing formula favors cities like Yonkers and White Plains. He called revenue coming to Pound Ridge “negligible.”

He still is upset with the process.

Like Nathan, he said the town board did not hold a public hearing on the town’s ability to opt-out or discuss the process publicly. Once word got out, he said, some people filed Freedom of Information requests and “laboriously watched the videotapes of all of their meetings for like a year and a half prior, and found that they did not do the required due diligence the state required.”

He said town officials were not forthcoming when questioned about it.

“A year later, I guess the real question is, what’s been the impact? Well, the impact is nobody trusts the town board at all to do anything anymore.”

$90,000 and counting

Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan said the people coming to Pound Ridge for Purple Plains have also been stopping in other businesses for lunch and shopping.

And, Hansan said, the tax revenue making its way to the town comes in handy.

“We don’t have December numbers yet, but through November it’s $93,998,” he said of the tax revenue total from the dispensary’s partial first year of operation. “That’s $90,000 we weren’t planning on when we made the budget last year. We’ll clearly be well over a hundred thousand for 2024 now and we’ve been conservatively estimating $150,000 for 2025.”

“Those numbers have allowed us to fund the building of a structure at the Town Park and other enhancements in the Town Park,” Hansan said.