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Evening e-Edition
At a little brick building off Spencer Street, the mocha lattes are gone, the Tangarang Shatter and Sativa Moonrocks are coming.
Manchester-area people who were used to driving up to the Starbucks at 185 Spencer for their morning caffeine have been out of luck since the store closed in December.
But they’ll soon find something new at the same location: An AYR Wellness dispensary.
The Florida-based cannabis company last week received town permission to convert the former Starbucks building into a dispensary for medical and recreational marijuana.
It wants to remodel the building, add a vault and a restricted-access processing area as well as a security vestibule for customer check-in before they reach the retail area.
“The proposed facility would be open seven days a week, with about eight to 10 employees on site per day,” the company told the Planning and Zoning Commission in its application for a permit.
In some cases, customers could use the drive-through, but it won’t be anything like the driver reading an order into a speaker after reading an oversized menu along the driveway.
“The existing drive-through window is proposed to be used for pre-arranged pickup of customer orders by scheduled appointment only,” AYR said.
Starbucks had operated at 185 Spencer St. since 2003, but closed the location in early winter. It moved across the road to new building at 212 Spencer St.
AYR told the town that traffic on Spencer could decrease slightly because the dispensary will have fewer customers than Starbucks did. The drive-through, for instance, will be limited to 12 pre-arranged pickups an hour.
It plans security cameras at the dispensary’s drive-through to capture all vehicle license plates as well as images of the drivers.
AYR, which operates more than 80 dispensaries in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and elsewhere, provided the town with an extensive security plan.
It includes motion detectors at exterior doors and windows, and within all rooms that have cannabis. Additionally, the store will have glass break sensors at outside doors and windows with glass, audible alarms at the front and back of the building, and an alarm system that includes a monitor. In case of a malfunction, the system will notify managers within five minutes.
At the old location, Starbucks was wedged between a Dunkin’ outlet and a Popeye’s shop. The new one is on the opposite side of Spencer Street and about half a block west.
This is the company’s third bid to get into the Connecticut market: Last year it was approved for a 64,000-square-foot cultivation center in Bloomfield as well as a dispensary on Stamford’s East Side.
AYR’s new Manchester outlet will be the town’s third hybrid dispensary; Curaleaf and Fine Fettle also offer both recreational and medical marijuana sales.
While its menus vary from state to state, some of AYR’s other dispensaries around the country offer cannabis in edibles, vape cartridges, “pre-rolls,” concentrates, topicals and more.
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