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13-year veteran of the cannabis space launches Village in Hoboken
Kimberly Redmond//October 7, 2024//
Former NBA player and New Jersey native Al Harrington has launched a recreational dispensary back in his home state: Village, Located at 516 Washington St. in Hoboken. – PROVIDED BY JMARTINVISUALS
Former NBA standout Harrington returns home with NJ dispensary
Former NBA player and New Jersey native Al Harrington has launched a recreational dispensary back in his home state: Village, Located at 516 Washington St. in Hoboken. – PROVIDED BY JMARTINVISUALS
13-year veteran of the cannabis space launches Village in Hoboken
Kimberly Redmond//October 7, 2024//
Al Harrington retired from the NBA nine years ago, but the New Jersey native is only just getting started.
After hanging up his jersey in 2015 following 16 seasons on the court, the 44-year-old became a big advocate for cannabis reform and creating opportunities for minorities within the industry.
As part of that mission, he co-founded Viola, the first black-owned multinational cannabis brand in the U.S., with Dan Pettigrew. Now, his efforts are taking him back home to the Garden State with the launch of a recreational dispensary in Hoboken.
Harrington recently spoke with NJBIZ about his transition from the NBA to THC.
As a 13-year veteran of the cannabis space, Harrington believes there’s been significant progress in destigmatizing marijuana and is glad to be part of the movement.
“When I first started and I would have some of these conversations, it was just very taboo. People kind of shy away from, they didn’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“Now, any room that I go into, whether it’s regular entrepreneurs or civilians, they’re all asking and intrigued by the industry just from a business perspective,” he said. “And then from the standpoint of the medicinal side of it, there’s so many people that reach out to me all the time sayi2ng, ‘I can’t sleep. I’m struggling with this. Do you think any cannabis products can help me?’”
At his new dispensary, Harrington said he’s looking forward to hearing stories of the plant’s positive impact and being able to “create great experiences for people with the products.”
“It’s helping people and giving people such a better quality of life. That’s excites me and keeps me going and wanting to be part of this industry. I really feel a passion for it and it reminds me of the passion I had for basketball,” said Harrington, whose NBA career includes stints with the Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, Orlando Magic and Washington Wizards.
“It reminds me of the passion I had for basketball. I could have played until I was 80 years old,” said Harrington. “Now, I have something else that kind of fills that gap. Hopefully, I can be in this industry until I’m 80 years old.”
How it all began
After helping his then 79-year-old grandmother treat her glaucoma with cannabis, Harrington teamed up with Pettigrew to start Viola in 2011 to help others in her honor. The brand, named after Harrington’s grandmother, is also available in Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and New Jersey.
In 2019, the duo went on to start Village Brands to expand their footprint via their own retail dispensaries. Besides New Jersey, Village has storefronts in Illinois and Missouri.
Located at 516 Washington St. in Hoboken, Village caters to both seasoned cannabis enthusiasts and those curious to learn more about the health benefits. Following its Sept. 21 grand opening, Village is the third dispensary in the Mile Square City. It’s also the first East Coast location for Village, a multistate retail operator developed by Harrington and Pettigrew.
At the 1,400-square-foot shop, the premium lineup includes flower, edibles and vapes, along with products from the Viola brand. Staffed by a team dedicated to fostering a sense of community and wellbeing, Village will also host educational workshops and events that promote a deeper understanding of cannabis.
According to Harrington, Village Hoboken will be a flagship location for the MSO.
“The way the store is set up, it’s going to be more of in-and-out kind of a dispensary because of the space that we have,” he said. “So, we’re really focusing on educating our customers to figure out what products that they like so that they can order before they come, or even to take advantage of our delivery license as well.”
Since Village wants customers to feel comfortable, as well as knowledgeable about products, Harrington said budtenders are required to study up on every single brand the store carries.
“So that way, when they talk to customers, they can give them a well-rounded idea of the products that they’re thinking about consuming,” he said. “And since we’ve been doing that, we feel like we get more return customers, and we get a lot of people that are referring other customers or patients. That’s what we really focus on- making sure that they have the best experience possible when they come through our doors.”
Altogether, Village Hoboken will employ between 16 and 18 workers. “Because we stand for social equity, we try to have a very diverse employment pool. But then we also understand that we need to run a business and need to do good business. So, sometimes it doesn’t matter what the person looks like,” he said. “One of the things we do pride ourselves on is that we actually train people … We’ve had people that have come in as security, and then end up being the manager of the store. So, we definitely try to hire within and try to elevate from within our company.”
Coming full circle
Village’s arrival in New Jersey is a milestone for Harrington, who was born in Orange and raised in Roselle. As a child growing up in the 1980s, Harrington said he saw firsthand the impact of the war on drugs.
“I’m grateful to have the opportunity to bring my love of and experience in the cannabis industry over the last 13 years to Jersey,” Harrington said. “It’s a full circle moment to open a dispensary in the state where I was stopped and frisked as a kid who had never even touched flower … Now we’re able to sell cannabis legally in the wide open … I’m just really extremely excited about it.”
I’m grateful to have the opportunity to bring my love of and experience in the cannabis industry over the last 13 years to Jersey
– Al Harrington, Village owner
I’m grateful to have the opportunity to bring my love of and experience in the cannabis industry over the last 13 years to Jersey
– Al Harrington, Village owner
Pettigrew – who joined Harrington in supporting the NJ CAN 2020 campaign to end marijuana prohibition in the Garden State – expressed how thrilled they are to open on the East Coast.
“A lot is happening in the industry, and we look forward to continuing to grow our brands in New Jersey and beyond,” he said.
After the Hoboken launch, Harrington said he expects to open a store in Maryland as Village’s fifth dispensary by early 2025. “And then, we’re working on a couple new states that we’re looking to probably have 10 shops by the end of 2025,” said Harrington, noting, “We’re also still looking to expand to other cities in the state of New Jersey.”
When it came to settling on a location for Village’s New Jersey debut, Harrington said he and Pettigrew looked at several municipalities. Besides towns in Essex County, they considered Elizabeth — where Harrington played high school basketball at the now-closed St. Patrick High School.
Harrington then heard from a friend that “there was opportunity in Hoboken,” which is where he connected with local businessman Yilung Huang.
Huang, who owns the Washington Street property, partnered with Village to bring a dispensary to the space. It previously housed Vietnamese restaurant Pho Nomenon. When Village sought local approval from Hoboken’s Cannabis Review Board in March 2022, Huang told officials the pandemic’s impact left his business struggling and that he decided to pursue what he believes will be a “great opportunity” – a dispensary.
Speaking about Village’s partnership with Huang, Harrington said it’s been valuable to team up “with someone who has so much experience and that much goodwill within the community.”
Overall, opening the new store took nearly three years. In Hoboken, only six dispensaries are allowed citywide and no more than three per ward.
Recalling the local approval process, Harrington said, “It was difficult. The City of Hoboken took their time. They had us jump through a lot of hoops in order to get our approval. But at the end of the day, it makes sense. It is very community driven, making sure that everyone is safe and will feel safe while these businesses are operating.”
“We had to continue to harp on our experience in other states and how we’ve seen things rolled out and we’ve seen an extreme round of success,” Harrington said.
He went on to say, “It’s difficult everywhere. Nowhere is easy throughout this process … But the good thing is that we’ve had experience. We started off in Colorado, which, to me, is still probably the most highly regulated market in the space. So, since we’ve been able to navigate those orders, we haven’t seen anything that we haven’t seen before. But that doesn’t mean that it’s still not difficult.”
Highly involved
For Harrington and Pettigrew, Village is more than just a dispensary.
As a brand built on the values of community, education and access, the business serves to promote cannabis reform and social justice initiatives. It also gets involved with local outreach to foster connections in the neighborhood.
“To start, we’re looking at sponsoring the soccer league. And we plan on maybe going to softball games next year for some fundraising,” Harrington said.
At Village’s other locations, the shops run coat drives during the holiday season and some kind of collection program around Thanksgiving to benefit those in need. They’ve also assisted with local projects, like refurbishing parks, he said.
And although Hoboken has a reputation as one of the most affluent cities in the country, Harrington said, “There are still people in the area that can use help in some shape, form or fashion. So, combined with the fact that he [Huang] has been there for so long, collaborating with him we’ll definitely figure out ways that we can get back.”
“We plan on doing some of the same things we’ve done before, but we have to identify where the issues are so that we can hope to address them or provide solutions,” Harrington said.
Besides Village and Viola, Harrington is involved in several other ventures as an investor, including a CBD company, Re+play, and real estate. “That’s one of the first things they teach you when you start to acquire money. But cannabis is my main thing and that’s my day-to-day job – the cannabis industry,” he said.
Looking ahead, Harrington believes the legalized space will continue to progress and that “five, 10 years from now, cannabis will be available in CVS and different places like that.”
“I definitely think that the industry has evolved in a lot of good ways. But it’s still bad in some ways. There’s still some things that need to be fixed because right now it’s really impossible to run ‘a real business’ because some of the laws, the [federal] scheduling and no banking and stuff. But, I think as those things normalize, this industry is going to boom,” he said.
“Our kids won’t even know what we went through to get here because it’ll be just like alcohol or any of the other stuff that is regulated,” said Harrington.
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