About a month after opening Worcester’s first economic empowerment cannabis shop, Ross Bradshaw of New Dia announced that he’s planning to open a second location just steps away from one of Boston’s most iconic landmarks.
Bradshaw said he’s been quietly working on lining up a Boston location for about two years. The Boston New Dia location is in the basement part of the Cask ‘n Flagon building, right by Fenway Park.
“I’m super excited. I have to pinch myself,” Bradshaw said in an interview with MassLive on Friday. “It’s right smackdown on Lansdowne, right outside Fenway Park, but at the same time it also means that there’s a lot of responsibility, making sure that we do this right and that we’re good neighbors to the Boston Red Sox.”
Having locations in Boston and Worcester, the two largest cities in New England, will help to put New Dia on the map, Bradshaw said.
“Because of our background, because of our business model, we were fortunate enough to make it through the process and get a [host community agreement],” Bradshaw said. A host community agreement, or HCA, is an agreement between a cannabis company and a municipality that’s needed to start the licensure process. It is largely considered the most difficult part of opening a cannabis business in Massachusetts.
New Dia received its HCA from Boston in November and now has to go through the state Cannabis Control Commission process for licensure. That made the company the first in Massachusetts to secure an HCA in both Boston and Worcester, Bradshaw said.
Mayflower Medicinals, which has a recreational shop already open in Worcester, received an HCA from Boston this month to co-locate adult-use services at its existing medical dispensary in Allston. The company Suns Mass has also received HCAs in both cities.
New Dia is part of the CCC’s economic empowerment program, which was set up to benefit people and communities disproportionately affected by marijuana prohibition. Last year, Pure Oasis in Boston became the first economic empowerment business to open in the state.
Now a month into operations in Worcester, Bradshaw said the employees are settling into a groove and customers are getting into the habit of stopping in on the way home from work or while running errands.
New Dia’s Worcester store is set up to showcase different cannabis brands. The Boston location is much bigger and Bradshaw said the team is determining how to design the store.
The Fenway space is 13,000 square feet, Bradshaw said, with a waiting area of about 3,300 square feet, which is about the size of New Dia’s entire Worcester location.
Bradshaw said that the Boston store will look to give back to the communities of Roxbury, Mission Hill and Dorchester and he hopes to hire employees from those areas. He also wants to hire contractors for construction from minority-owned companies in Boston.
“We can replicate a lot of what we’ve already done [in Worcester] and have that huge impact in another community, in Boston,” Bradshaw said.
In addition to being next to Fenway Park, the shop is also right by the House of Blues. Bradshaw said the location comes with a lot of responsibility.
“It means that we have to be good stewards, we have to be good neighbors, we have to set a good example,” Bradshaw said. “That’s something we don’t take lightly and that’s going to be our primary focus, is safety and then also just making sure we represent this industry in the light that we want and that we stay true to our economic empowerment vision.”
It’s tough to predict a timeline for the Boston location, but ideally, Bradshaw said he’d like to open around the time of Boston Red Sox opening day in 2022.
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Ross Bradshaw of New Dia.
© Melissa Hanson | mhanson/masslive.com
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