Joliet cannabis stores busy but orderly

The first days of legal pot sales generated lines of marijuana buyers as expected in Joliet but not the traffic mess that was feared.

City officials are watching to see if new parking accommodations will need to be made at the two Joliet dispensaries. But long lines of customers in the first days of business did not lead to problems, they said.

"It looked like people waiting to get into a movie theater," Joliet interim Fire Chief Greg Blaskey said after driving past the Rise store on Colorado Avenue on New Year's Day.

Blaskey said he was looking for potential access problems and didn’t see any.

“There was no parking that was blocking the street,” he said. “The line was wrapped around the building. But everything appeared to be orderly. We had no calls for service.”

“Orderly” was a word that could have been used to describe the experience of buying recreational marijuana at the Rise store.

Customers waited quietly in below freezing temperature for a 6 a.m. opening to be among the first to buy marijuana for recreational use in Illinois on New Year’s Day.

“It seems like a different world,” said Joseph, a 21-year-old Plainfield resident who did not want to give his last name. “A lot of people didn’t think this was going to happen in their lifetimes.”

Once the doors opened, customers were admitted in small groups.

First, they registered at a front desk, showing identification to verify they were 21.

Next, they placed orders.

Then, they went into a long line leading to a counter where they paid for their purchases and waited until their names were called before picking up cannabis products contained in sealed packages at another counter.

Clerks called out first names only or first names with last initial.

Charlie Donna of Oak Forest said the experience was more tightly controlled than in other states with legalized sales of recreational marijuana.

“I’ve been to dispensaries in five states,” Donna said.

Illinois is the 11th state to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Dispensaries vary from “high-end, glossy retail stores” to “mom-and-pop hippie stores,” Donna said, but tend to blend in with their surroundings.

“They’re just part of the neighborhood,” he said.

Donna traveled from Oak Forest to Joliet because there are not a lot of dispensaries available, a factor that may lead to lots of out-of-town business.

Joliet has both the Rise store and a 3C dispensary located in the Rock Run Business Park, and there were long lines at both.

Employees at the Rise store are using off-site parking at a far-off site on Larkin Avenue in the early days of business and taking a shuttle bus to work to leave parking spots available at the store.

Joliet police have been on both sites to control traffic, part of an agreed upon plan between the city and Green Thumb Industries, which operates both dispensaries.

Joliet Director of Community Development Kendall Jackson said the city is taking a “wait-and-see” approach before deciding whether the Rise store, which is in the middle of the retail district outside the Louis Joliet Mall, will continue to draw so many customers that it needs to make other parking arrangements.

“If there’s pressure on the other businesses from a parking standpoint, they’ll have to address that,” Jackson said.

So far, Jackson said Friday, reports from police at the scene are “lots of traffic, long lines but nothing extraordinary.”