Mayor Vivian Gorsuch said council members Melissa Mick and Cindy Wilson cast the no votes on dissolving the nine-month moratorium and rule setting, but she has all along supported the new business venture.
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“My thoughts were from the beginning was why Seven Mile, is this a scam, there have been so many up and downs, this is a business and there’s not too many businesses knocking on Seven Mile’s door…,” Gorsuch said. “It’s a business and I’m excited about a new business coming to town, that’s awesome. I don’t think it’s going to hurt the village at all.”
The rest of the council, with exception of newly elected Councilman Jack Young, has refused to comment on the issue.
Young said they needed to lift the moratorium so the business and its license fees could come to the village.
“The village is going to make some money off it, that’s the reason they voted for it in the first place…,” he said. “I voted to lift the moratorium because the company can’t build or do anything else until we do something.”
The site for the store at 405 S. Main St. is still listed as a property owned by Mark and Jan Hyde. The letter of intent to purchase the property by Bloom Medicinals, also known as 127 OH LLC, notes the purchase price will be $225,000. The auditor’s website values the parcel and the yellow garage on it at $57,430.
Gorsuch said she won’t actually believe they are going to get the drug emporium until there is an actual ribbon cutting, but the council has limited other marijuana businesses, no matter what the state does.
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“There is a ban against recreational marijuana and processing and cultivation, if that were to ever try to come to Seven Mile, even if the state allowed recreational,” Gorsuch said. “Council has put on a ban and it was voted on unanimously.”
The regulations also set operating hours of Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m and it expressly prohibits sales on Sundays or federally recognized holidays.
Nicole van Rensburg, CEO of 127 OH LLC, told the Journal-News previously that the company chose Seven Mile because of its proximity to Ohio 127 and it is centrally located within a region that includes Butler, Darke and Preble counties. Now that the moratorium has been lifted she said the company is ready to get started.
“We are proceeding expeditiously with the development of all five of our dispensary locations,” she wrote in an email. “We look forward to providing high-quality medical marijuana to qualified patients in the near future.”
She would not give any details about what the store will look like or specific products that will be available.
127 OH has the largest number of dispensaries allowed by the state at five. When the provisional licenses were awarded, the state set a six-month deadline for the shops to be ready to do business, according to Ali Simon, Public and Policy Affairs liaison for the state pharmacy board. That means the stores will have to be built, stocked, and have all permits by November.
“They had six months to establish everything that was in their application,” Simon said. “Then we would inspect and we can award their certificate of operation and then they can open for business.”
She said 127 OH has applied for a variance to that deadline for four of five locations, with the Seven Mile location excluded.
van Rensburg declined to comment on the variance request.
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