The Bedford City Council unanimously approved the planning commission’s recommendation for a medical marijuana dispensary to be located in at 22803 Rockside Road in the Meadowbrook Market Square.

At the May 1 meeting, representatives from the Buckeye Relief answered questions from council members and other meeting attendees about the new Bedford business. Caroline Henry, head of governmental affairs for Buckeye Relief, said that while the location with be a retail store where patients can buy medical marijuana items, the general public is not allowed to enter the dispensary.

“To come into a dispensary you have to be a registered patient,” Henry said. “Which means you have to have one of 25 conditions that are approved by the state of Ohio to qualify.”

Also to qualify as a patient, Henry said you have to take your medical records to a recommending physician who is trained in prescribing medical marijuana. Patients can then be certified, which means they receive a special card from Ohio, that they then can present at the dispensary to allow entrance.

“We only allow patients, and they can bring one visitor with them to the dispensary,” said Henry. “And the visitor is not allowed to leave the lobby.” She said the visitor cannot enter the retail area of the dispensary, but is allowed to be accompany the patient who may need assistance getting to the store, or with talking to the pharmacist there. Patients under the influence of medical marijuana are not allowed to drive, Henry said.

Buckeye Relief also has a store in Cleveland Heights on Coventry Road, and Henry said the dispensaries are very secure. “You won’t see children from the community running into the dispensary,” Henry said. “That just doesn’t happen.”

A.J. Caraballo, the director of retail operations for Buckeye Relief, said they think maybe 100 to 200 customers could use the Bedford dispensary per day, and stated that Ohio has 168,000 patients registered for the use of medical marijuana. He said they expect 25 or more new jobs created by the new store in Bedford.

Henry said there is currently an initiative in the works that could legalize some sort of adult recreational use of marijuana in Ohio. The people backing the initiative are hoping to get the legislation on the November ballot. If such an initiative passes in Ohio, then medical marijuana dispensaries would automatically become adult use stores, Henry said. However, she said that local communities would still have a say on whether they want the dispensaries changed to adult use retail or not.

Buckeye Relief operates a 60,000-square foot cultivation facility in Eastlake, of which 25,000 square feet is used for growing the marijuana plants. The facility also has processing operations in which the oils from the plants are extracted and made into products such as tinctures, capsules and edibles.

Also at the meeting, the board also approved a planning commission recommendation to allow Jamil Zayed to build a 6,000-square foot addition to the retail properties located at 277 Northfield Road. Current businesses located at this address include John’s Deli, Mr. Hero and a home health care office. According to the recommendation, the addition would allow for four new white-box spaces to be created. City Manager Mike Mallis said two of the new units would be earmarked for the owner to house Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, and the other two spaces the owner would be leasing out.

In other board news:

  • Council approved a contract with Simplex-IT to upgrade the city’s core network infrastructure at city hall. Mallis said the proposal is to install a 10-gigabyte fiber adapter which includes two new switches. He said this would raise the capacity of the current system from its 1 gigabyte limit and fix a failed switch in the process.
  • Council also approved purchase of a device from Plug Hug that helps clean fire hydrants and prep them for painting, which will save a lot of time and manual effort, according Mallis. He said Chagrin Falls has been using a similar device, and they have been happy with the results.