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Medical Marijuana Dispensary Owner To Meet with West Loop Group Wednesday

By Stephanie Lulay | November 11, 2014 8:42am
 Businessman Perry Mandera has applied to open a dispensary in a vacant building at 1105 W. Fulton St. in Fulton Market.
Businessman Perry Mandera has applied to open a dispensary in a vacant building at 1105 W. Fulton St. in Fulton Market.
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Mandera photo: Getty Images; Fulton photo: DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay

WEST LOOP — Another West Loop group on Wednesday night will hold a community meeting with an operator of a proposed medical marijuana dispensary.

The Randolph/Fulton Market Association will host a community meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Alhambra Palace restaurant, 1240 W. Randolph St. It is the second meeting a West Loop neighborhood group has hosted with a West Loop dispensary owner in the last week.

The group will meet with the operator Wednesday. Trucking executive and strip club owner Perry Mandera plans to open Custom Strains at 1105 W. Fulton St.

Green Thumb Industries co-founder Ben Kovler, who wants to open a dispensary at 955 W. Lake St., will not attend the meeting, according to a representative.

Other issues on the Randolph/Fulton Market Association agenda include:

• The city's Fulton/Randolph District Plan, which would create a historic district along Fulton and Randolph streets. In early October, 40 area business owners demanded that Mayor Rahm Emanuel withdraw the plan.

• Lake Street infrastructure improvements from Halsted Street to Ogden Avenue.

Although Mandera's group wasn't able to attend a Neighbors of the West Loop meeting last week, the group will present plans at the Randolph Fulton Market Association meeting this week, confirmed Elizabeth Kosar, a spokeswoman working with Mandera's group.

Roger Romanelli's Randolph/Fulton Market group also met with the two West Loop dispensary owners in October.

The Lake Street medical marijuana dispensary proposal earned a special-use permit late last month before the city's Zoning Board of Appeals. The city board is slated to consider the Fulton dispensary's special-use permit Nov. 21.

After the Lake Street dispensary cleared city zoning, owners are now waiting for the state to approve or deny their application to operate it. The state plans to grant 60 dispensary licenses, 13 of which will be located in Chicago.

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