My Michigan hometown previews how legal cannabis could impact Rochester and other cities

ROCHESTER — It won’t happen right away. It probably won’t happen for a year or more.

But eventually, once Rochester and other Minnesota cities begin to open their first recreational marijuana dispensaries, they will be confronted with an option: How much should the city embrace the economic opportunity recreational cannabis presents as it becomes legal?

Because opportunity is what it will mean for communities looking for an economic jolt. While smoking pot still retains a “Reefer Madness” negativity for many, its potential for economic revitalization and job creation is also undeniable.

My old hometown of Monroe, Michigan, is a case in point.

Minnesota is on the verge of joining the growing list of states that have legalized weed for people 21 and older, after the DFL-controlled House voted 73-57 to legalize it. On Saturday, a thinly DFL-controlled Senate voted 34-32 in favor of adult-use cannabis legislation, sending the bill to DFL Gov. Tim Walz for his signature.

My hometown offers a potential sneak preview of the future for cities such as Rochester.

Michigan was the first state in the Midwest to legalize recreational cannabis. And whenever I revisit my old stomping grounds in Monroe, Mich., nothing is more surprising or jarring for me than seeing the large number of marijuana businesses that have cropped up.

Five years after Michigan legalized weed for recreational use in 2018, there are now 13 marijuana shops open for business and several more on the drawing board, said Kim Fortner, the township’s community development director and zoning officer. For a community of a mere 14,000 (the population of Monroe Charter Township where I was born and raised), recreational cannabis has become the dominant industry in my hometown.

The council has since imposed a moratorium on new cannabis business proposals, more because of the traffic it has created than the drug itself.

“A lot of communities have embraced it from an economic development standpoint and saw it as an opportunity to create new jobs,” said Josh Hovey, communications director for the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Michigan, citing a report that 30,000 new jobs have been created in the cannabis industry statewide. “It’s been a boon for the community. They’ve been willing to embrace it.”

Nothing has changed the character of my hometown more in recent memory than the proliferation of marijuana businesses. There are now more pot stores than gas stations. It’s hard to drive down a street or pass a corner without seeing a cannabis outlet. It has become a pot boom town. Detractors call Monroe County “Marijuana County.”

And yet Monroe is far from the most pot-friendly outpost and not even in the top 10 of cities, townships and villages in Michigan for licenses issued and marijuana tax revenue generated. That distinction goes to liberal bastion Ann Arbor, which has issued 27 licenses and raked in $1.4 million in added tax revenue, according to the state of Michigan.

Still, Monroe township has received a gusher of marijuana tax revenue — a nothing-to-sneeze at $570,000 a year, a healthy portion of the township’s $3 billion budget, said township supervisor Al Barron. That money goes to roads and schools and helps the county and municipality.

“The thing is, the fear that people have,” Barron said, “there’s still a stigma: long hair, freaky people. Like when we were kids who used marijuana. But there’s no incidences.”

What does this have to do with Rochester? Well, a couple of things. While my hometown is smaller, much less populated and has no world-renowned health care clinic, it shares a couple of characteristics that could make Rochester and other cities fertile ground for the cannabis industry.

Before the flourishing of cannabis, my hometown was home to a number of empty stores, diners, malls and craft shops. Marijuana dispensaries flowed into those empty, often blighted spaces, now boosting tax receipts to a level that no other industry matches.

As any visitor of Rochester knows, the downtown isn’t exactly going gangbusters. The city suffers from empty storefronts and vast amounts of unused office spaces. Ever since the end of the pandemic and Mayo Clinic’s decision to continue to have hundreds of staff work remotely, a regular topic of conversation has been the Med City’s desultory downtown and lack of dynamism.

Certainly legal weed could be part of that answer.

Monroe township also hugs the border of Ohio, a state where recreational marijuana is illegal. The short hop brings a multitude of Ohio consumers into Michigan to buy a product that they can’t purchase in their home states. Driving from Ohio and Indiana, drivers encounter an assortment of billboards advertising pot dispensaries to encourage “pot tourism.”

With Minnesota surrounded by states that continue to outlaw recreational cannabis, including Wisconsin, Iowa and both Dakotas, Minnesota could see an influx of visitors from south, east and west. Southeastern Minnesota — not only Rochester but Austin, Winona, Owatonna and Albert Lea — could be a magnet for cannabis consumers.

Michigan did not put a cap on the number of marijuana licenses that will be issued by the state. But it gave local municipalities the authority to restrict or limit the type and number of facilities licensed in their boundaries. The proposed Minnesota law allows local governments to limit the number of cannabis retailers to one for every 12,500 residents, if they choose.

Barron said opposition to recreational cannabis was strongest at the outset, when the township began issuing licenses. Back then, the school superintendent warned of the maligning influence on students as school buses passed cannabis shops on the way to school. But those arguments have become much less frequent as the industry has become part of the township’s fabric.

“There’s just people who will never support the industry or like the idea of people consuming cannabis. There’s definitely no changing their minds,” Hovey said. “This is one of those things where this is a personal freedom issue in Michigan more than anything else.”