by Dominic Corva, Executive Director
Last week I had a chance to sit down with I-5 Real Estate owner Tom Gordon. Tom is one of the few cannabis real estate stakeholders that I see regularly at activist, as opposed to just industry, organizational events and meetings. Our half-hour conversation addressed where and why real estate markets are such an important factor to understand structural challenges to policy implementation.
He also blew my mind when I asked his sense of what percentage of producer applicants will end up meeting the various challenges to their 502 permit applications. From his perspective, he estimates that between 5 and 15% will make it through the process. That’s a much lower percentage than I expected. It does however match up with Becky Smith of the WSLCB’s information from a couple weeks ago, that while 10 producers have made it all the way through, 40 more would be finished but for their own unfinished real estate business.