Long Island's first recreational cannabis dispensary to open in East Farmingdale

Long Island's first brick-and-mortar recreational cannabis dispensary is set to open in East Farmingdale within weeks.

Family-owned Strain Stars will operate out of a 3,500 square-foot storefront on Route 110, south of Gazza Boulevard, in the same plaza as The Main Event restaurant and sports bar.

The business received a special use permit from the Babylon Town zoning board of appeals last month and is awaiting a certificate of occupancy from the town. Once that is filed, the state will perform a site inspection and, if it passes, its doors will be open for business, said the company's CEO Yuvraj Singh, 24, of Hicksville.

Singh said he aims to open by May 31, but the debut may get pushed back to the first week of June.

Nearly 40 businesses have received temporary or "conditional" state licenses to open recreational pot shops on Long Island. To qualify for a conditional retail license, someone must show that they owned a business that turned a profit for at least two years and were convicted of a marijuana-related offense or are related to someone with such a conviction.

According to the state’s Office of Cannabis Management website, there are currently nine recreational dispensaries open in the state: five in Manhattan, one in Queens and three upstate. 

Babylon, Brookhaven, Riverhead and Southampton are the only towns on Long Island to have opted in to retail shops. Officials from the latter three towns said Friday they have not received any official applications for dispensaries. Retailers with licensees have struggled to find dispensary locations that meet zoning requirements passed by the towns. 

Long Islanders can order from delivery companies located elsewhere in the state. The Cannabis Place, a Queens-based company, started delivering recreational marijuana throughout the region on Wednesday. The business is a delivery-only dispensary with no walk-in locations.

'We wanted to be a part of this industry'

Strain Stars is owned by Yuvraj Singh; his sister Jasmine Kaur, 26; cousin Kamaldeep Singh, 29, all of Hicksville; and family friend Tushar Mallick, 32, of East Meadow. Yuvraj Singh helps manage his family’s holding company Jasmart Group, overseeing 15 businesses consisting mostly of gas stations and convenience stores on Long Island. Kaur is a financial associate in investment banking; Kamaldeep Singh, who has convictions for marijuana possession, owns and manages two gas stations and convenience stores in Queens; and Mallick, who has multiple sclerosis and is a medical marijuana user, has worked in cannabis dispensaries in Colorado. 

“We fit the [license] criteria and we really wanted to be a part of this industry and set sort of a standard since we are going to be the first ones on Long Island,” Yuvraj Singh said Thursday. “We want to be an example of what a proper, legal dispensary is supposed to be like.”

Singh said he found the location for the dispensary in November 2021, when he applied for the state license, which he received a year later. The store’s size, ample parking and prime Route 110 location made it attractive, Singh said. It also met the town’s requirements that dictate dispensaries be permitted only in industrially zoned areas and outside a 200-foot radius of religious properties and a 500-foot radius of schools, libraries, parks, and any other areas “where minors congregate."

“It was one of the few locations that fit our personal criteria as well as the town and state’s criteria,” Singh said.

Upon entering the store, patrons will be required to provide ID to prove they are at least 21 years old. The ID will be scanned into a system that creates a customer profile that will track how much each person purchases, adhering to the state’s required daily limit for individual cannabis sales.

Transactions will take place through a “one on one” system whereby there will be five employees and a maximum of five customers in the space at any one time, said Glenn Graham, head of a Bay Shore planning and design firm representing Strain Stars at the April 20 zoning board hearing where the dispensary was granted a special use permit. The permit is for one year but can be renewed. 

At night everything gets put into a “vault and locked up” with nothing left inside the display cases, Graham said.

“It’s not like someone can just break in and smash some cabinets open and get access to it,” he said.

There will be both armed and unarmed security personnel made up of retired police officers and military veterans inside and outside the store, Singh said.

The dispensary will use 10 to 12 vendors approved by the state and sell marijuana flowers at $40 to $50 for 1/8 of an ounce, as well as edibles, vapes and other products containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in pot that produces a high. The store will also sell cannabidiol (CBD) products that don’t have THC, as well as accessories such as glassware.

Strain Stars will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The store could operate initially as “appointment-only” Singh said.

He said he had wanted to open an onsite consumption lounge but landlord Joe Picone III would not permit it. His goal is to have consumption sites at the additional two dispensaries he is permitted to open under state regulations. He said he is looking for locations for those pot stores but hopes to have them in Babylon Town.

Picone said Friday regulations around consumption sites remain murky so he didn’t want one at the site, which is one of six stores he rents out in the plaza. He said he is being cautious because it’s a new industry and decided to offer Strain Stars a shorter-term lease of three years.

“We’re excited and we wouldn’t have made a deal if we weren’t,” Picone said, noting that his other tenants, including The Main Event, are similarly enthused. “We’re taking a risk as much as [Singh] is taking a risk here, and hopefully we both gain from it. Hopefully it’s a good clientele and it brings good customers and that’s what it’s all about, pro-business.”

'Shark Tank'-like pitch

Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer said Strain Stars’ initial pitch to the town felt like an episode of "Shark Tank."

“They blew us away because we didn’t know what to expect with this,” he said. “They were well-organized and prepared. I was very impressed.”

Three other applicants have approached the town to open up stores in East Farmingdale, Deer Park and West Babylon, said Matt McDonough, an attorney for the town, but they haven't had a special use permit hearing yet. Strain Stars’ certificate of occupancy is the last step on the town end, he said, and to receive that the landlord must sign off on the town’s covenants and restrictions for the business, including set hours and parking allotment. Picone said he agreement will be finalized soon. 

Schaffer said he had been hesitant to allow marijuana retail stores in the town.

“I’m very relieved,” he said of Strain Stars. “I’m happy they’re going to be the first for us and probably for Long Island just because of how they’ve handled themselves from start to finish.”

Local municipalities get 3% of cannabis revenue and Schaffer said that money will be funneled to the town’s substance abuse services.

Lori-Ann Novello, executive director of Babylon Cares, a community organization that aims to reduce substance abuse, has met with Singh and other potential dispensary owners and hopes to offer educational information in the shops on marijuana use. 

“So far we’ve had a good response, but it’s early,” she said. “I think everyone wants this to succeed and they will do what they need to do to make sure that they don’t cause issues that cast a negative light on the industry. But it’s difficult because of the need for education, so we’ve really got to get the word out.”

Singh said he and his co-owners are feeling the weight of responsibility in being the first dispensary on Long Island.

“We know we have to make sure everything is working flawlessly, but our team is very well-equipped with its business background,” Singh said. “We’re not catering to that negative, stoner aspect. We’re trying to show that cannabis is beneficial and can be enjoyed by everybody.”

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.