Torrington entrepreneur wants to sell recreational pot in Newtown, which has banned cannabis sales

NEWTOWN — An entrepreneur who is opening a retail arm of his cannabis dispensary in Torrington wants to expand sales in greater Danbury by opening an adult use shop in a town where cannabis sales have been banned since the day Connecticut legalized the plant in 2021.

Thomas Macre, the founder of Still River Wellness, has petitioned Newtown to lift its ban on cannabis businesses and grant him a permit to open a recreational pot shop just south of the Stop & Shop at Sand Hill Plaza on Route 25.

“The building is 4,600-square feet and has over 100 parking spaces and meets the distance and separation requirements listed in the (zoning) amendment,” Macre told members of Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission at a mid-January public hearing. “There are no plans to change the exterior other than new signage to replace the former sign, and the windows will be frosted with opaque film to prevent the product being visible from exterior.”

Members of Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission had more questions for Macre than he could answer about traffic the pot shop would generate, revenue the town would collect, and reaction of the other mall tenants, so the public hearing will be continued on Thursday.

The same five-member commission wasted no time deciding how Newtown would respond when Connecticut legalized recreational cannabis on July 1, 2021, holding a public hearing that night and becoming the first town in greater Danbury to prohibit cannabis businesses.

“We should act to prohibit it tonight, and it can be revisited later,” Newtown’s former Planning Director George Benson said at the time. The commission agreed, 4-to-1.

Since then Danbury has passed regulations allowing four types of tax-generating cannabis businesses, and has approved a retail pot shop on the city’s east side and a hybrid medicinal cannabis and adult use retail pot dispensary on the city’s west end.

And in Torrington, where Macre’s Still River Wellness has run a medicinal dispensary since 2019, plans are underway to open a retail arm of the dispensary business next door by the end of February.

Macre told Newtown’s commission on Jan. 19 that Still River Wellness is one of the nine approved companies for adult use under the new retail sales regulation that Connecticut put into effect on Jan. 10.

Macre, who has applied for both a change to Newtown’s zoning to allow retail cannabis sales in the light industrial zone, and for permission to open a retail shop in the Waterfall Plaza at 255 South Main St., said all the safeguards in Connecticut’s cannabis regulation will be in force in Newtown.

“[U]pon arrival, customers are greeted by security at the front where their IDs are scanned and verified, and the location will be under 24/7 camera coverage,” Macre told the commission in mid-January. “Cannabis products are stored in a vault that is a restricted access area … There is zero tolerance for onsite consumption consistent with state regulations.”

“The facility will have a carbon filtration system to eliminate any odor which is rarely an issue as there are no live plants, and child proof, tamper-proof packaging emits no odor," Macre said.

Reach Rob Ryser at rryser@newstimes.com or 203-731-3342