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Small township cannabis business thriving
Six Lakes resident Darci Bower trims marijuana plants on July 16, at Hempire Collective, 10147 N. Loomis Road.
A fireplace displays the name of marijuana dispensary Hempire Collective
Mount Pleasant resident Donovan Porter trims excess leaves and stems from marijuana buds
Clare resident and bud tender Melanie Rider (right) tends to a customer
Small township cannabis businesses thriving
10 | www.MIGREENSTATE.com ANDREW MULLIN FOR MICHIGAN GREEN STATE
Wise Township Clerk Doris Methner said township expenses had been rising while revenue was plateauing. This gave Mario Porter an opportunity. After the northeastern Isabella County township opted in for medical marijuana in 2017 to generate revenue, Porter opened a medical cannabis grow operation in 2019. It later morphed into a recreational marijuana dispensary, fully opening in September of 2020. Despite having opened in a rural township during a global pandemic, business is booming for his dispensary, Hempire Collective. “This month, we are on track for about $100,000 more sales than we have done so far in any given month,” Porter said in mid-July. Located at 10147 N. Loomis Road in Loomis, Hempire is not the only small township cannabis business thriving in Michigan. While the towns might be small, business is anything but. Porter said his store grows marijuana plants in-house, sporting several different strains. Any products they sell, such as gummies, are not made on site, but they are made with Hempire’s plants by a third party. The high volume of business for Hempire most likely came from people sitting at home not being able to do much and being given extra money through unemployment/stimulus checks, Porter said. Since the dispensary also grows its own plants, the profit margins are much wider than if the cannabis were purchased off site. Business has been doing so well that Porter is already looking into opening other dispensary locations. Heading out northeast from Wise Township is Pinconning Township, a small township right along I-75/U.S. 23 in northern Bay County. One of the first sights greeting people pulling off the exit is Essence Provisioning Center, one of two dispensaries in the township. Owner Kirk Thomas said the company opened in 2018 for medical marijuana, then shifted to recreational in 2019. Operating in a smaller town can be hard in terms of making sales, so he has to overcompensate to get attention on his business, Thomas said. He bought his property for the location and put billboards along I-75 to garner attention. “I am the first thing you see when you come to Pinconning and I treat my store as such,” Thomas said. “I want it to be a memorable event, and I want it to be aesthetically pleasing. I am a guardian for the township when people come in.” The pandemic also had a positive impact on his business, drawing more people to his place as people were looking to pass the time at home. Both Thomas and Porter are planning on offering delivery services in the near future. Thomas’ plan is to deliver just 30 minutes away initially, and then up to two hours away later on. Porter is looking at a 70- to 80-mile radius. Having these dispensaries could give these townships economic opportunities as well. Methner said Wise Township has received its first funding from the state of Michigan’s marijuana revenue sharing, which gives municipalities a portion of excise tax money paid by dispensaries. With this, Wise Township received $28,000 from marijuana revenue sharing alone earlier this year. In total, the township has around $200,000 of marijuana-related funds in a bank account ready to be put into township budgets. Methner said the township can now do away with a special assessment put on residents to fund onethird of the township’s fire budget, and fund it with marijuana revenue instead. She also hopes to repair some crumbling roads and clean some ditches in the township. “Clean some ditches and fix up some roads, that is the basic goal that we have in place,” Methner said. “That is basically what I was looking at when I introduced this (marijuana funding).” Giving back to the Wise Township community is also important to Porter. “We are locally (operated),” Porter said. “We are from the community, and we want to give back to the community because we are from here.”
