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Wicker Park Pot Clinic Warns of Imminent Closure, Crowdsources for Rent

By Alisa Hauser | May 1, 2015 3:41pm | Updated on May 4, 2015 7:56am
 Good Intentions LLC, a medical marijuana clinic, plans to open next week inside a strip mall at 1721-23 N. Ashland Ave. in Wicker Park. The clinic will join two other medical offices, one of which is moving out at the end of September.
Good Intentions LLC, a medical marijuana clinic, plans to open next week inside a strip mall at 1721-23 N. Ashland Ave. in Wicker Park. The clinic will join two other medical offices, one of which is moving out at the end of September.
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DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser

WICKER PARK —  Just a few days before some of its clients plan to testify before a state advisory board to get more conditions such as anorexia eligible for medical marijuana treatment, the owner of a Wicker Park pot clinic said she is several months behind on rent and can no longer provide free consultations.

Tammy Jacobi, owner of Good Intentions Medical Marijuana Services, which opened in August 2013, said on Friday that the clinic at 1723 N. Ashland Ave. is "insolvent" and could be forced to permanently close.

That would mean the city's first pot-consultation clinic could be closing before medical marijuana even gets dispensed.

"It is with much sadness that we have to announce our inability to continue helping patients charitably. Our company has worked tirelessly to provide hope and improve the health of the people of Illinois. We knew patients needed help and that right now, they needed it for free. It was a sacrifice we were willing to make. That's why our name is Good Intentions," Jacobi said in a statement.

Tammy Jacobi and former Good Intentions Managing Director Daniel Reid, August 2013 [DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser]

Earlier this week, Jacobi launched a GoFundMe campaign to try and raise $50,000 to keep the business going and continue to offer free assistance to patients looking to become a part of The Illinois Medical Cannabis Pilot Program, according to its site.

Though the clinic cannot prescribe or dispense marijuana, Good Intentions consultations include physician referrals and assistance with completing official state forms.

A former nurse who gave up her licenses in Michigan and Illinois to focus on the business side of bringing a medical marijuana consultancy to Chicago in advance of the Illinois Medical Cannabis Pilot Program, Jacobi said on Friday that she had to lay off three full-time workers.

The workers were managing a caseload of 1,400 clients who were "navigating through the system and the inability to help the medically fragile is a loss for patients and the program," Jacobi said.

But only "maybe 600 of the 1,400 actually paid," Jacobi clarified. When asked to elaborate, she said each of the paying clients accounted for an average of $159 in revenue.

Jacobi said Good Intention's $6,500 monthly office rent is steep because it includes an on-premises billboard that faces the Kennedy Expressway (Good Intentions also has a billboard on the Eisenhower Expressway and one on North Avenue).

"Part of our insolvency is that our rent is way behind and we have very gracious landlords who are on hold waiting for us to have a revenue stream," Jacobi said.

Daniel Reid, a former managing director of Good Intentions, who resigned from the venture in June to start Liberate Physicians Centers,  was not aware of the challenges the clinic was facing until being informed by DNAinfo Chicago on Friday.

"I feel badly that they are not going to be able to continue. It's a real shame. The program has had difficulty getting off the ground with all the politics and lawsuits and delays, it has put patients in a difficult situation," Reid said.

Jacobi said the clinic is currently closed "so we can formulate a plan."

Jacobi said she plans to attend the Illinois Division of Medical Cannabis's advisory board meeting on Monday to show support for 12 of the clinic's clients, who are petitioning the state to add Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anorexia nervosa, and irritable bowel syndrome, among others, to the list of conditions that can be treated with medical marijuana.

"We put so much work into this and we are proud of everything we had put into helping people," she said.

Jacobi noted that extreme delays by the state, lawsuits over the state licensing process for dispensaries and cultivation centers and the potential for the program to end in 2017 has left patients "with doubt that the program will ever come to fruition."

"Patients are reluctant to pay to be part of this program because they don't really believe [medical marijuana in Illinois] will happen," she said.

Last year The State of Illinois filed a complaint against Good Intention's Dr. Brian Murray, contending that "no one physician could possibly treat all of the approved conditions in Illinois and it is therefore inappropriate for a physician to practice out of any office that advertises it specializes in medical marijuana services."

Murray moved out of the office at 1723 North Ashland Avenue in Chicago and is no longer part of Good Intentions, Jacobi said on Friday.

Good Intentions office at 1723 N. Ashland Ave. [DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser]

 

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