City wants help extending Lynch Drive; Seven Point says design adjustments being made, they are coming
After the recent Danville City Council rejection of a cannabis dispensary just north of the already existing Sunnyside dispensary; there are two major “what happens next” questions. The first concerns the lot that Parkway Dispensary was going to use. Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk says something could still be coming there, but the catch is that the road, Lynch Drive, still ends there right behind Sunnyside. So most likely, Cronk says, it would still need to be a developer that wants to come in and take care of the road extension as well.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: A roadway for retail to locate on; that needs to be constructed first. And that could be a pricy venture. We’re hoping a developer that is capable, or the seller, will develop that roadway.
If it’s “the seller,” that could be Sleep Inn & Suites, located right behind Sunnyside, as they currently own the plot immediately to the north of where Lynch Drive ends.
The second “what happens next” question is the already approved Seven Point of Illinois cannabis dispensary, set for the other side of Lynch Road, at 388 Eastgate Drive, in the parking lot in front of the Econo Lodge. Seven Point CEO Brad Zerman says when they first won the lottery for a license in Danville in August of 2021, they had a contract and the zoning taken care of by that fall. But then, things were anticipated to slow down for quite a while, when numerous parties that did not win the license lotteries were filing lawsuits against the state.
But Zerman says, now that just about all of those are settled, it is definitely full speed ahead to build in Danville. What’s changed, however, is where the front of their dispensary will be. It was going to face Lynch Road. But Zerman says now that the Golden Nugget casino is opening soon, and other lot transactions around the Econo Lodge are taking place, there’s been a change in plans. Zerman says it’s a bit complicated; but the whole idea is, have it facing the area where the customers would be approaching from.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: We didn’t really understand, until more recently, how this whole new subdivision worked. Now that we fully understand it, and my architect was there in person, talking to the engineers and stuff. Now we fully understand that this intersection is what we want to be facing, because that’s the future. And so we’re flipping around the whole footprint.
Zerman says the plan now calls for groundbreaking this mid-April, construction completion this mid-October, and an opening maybe around the holiday season, or maybe even right around the four-year anniversary of cannabis becoming legal in Illinois; which would be New Year’s Day, 2024.
Zerman added that the dispensary will have a lot of music-themed items, including the sale of new vinyl records. He also mentioned that even though the city has not yet approved a consumption lounge; an extra shell connected to the main building will be built, for either that or something else in the future.
