Geographies of Legal Cannabis Real Estate in Washington: An interview with Tom Gordon

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.