04/04/2022
When Rainforest Cafe closed its high-profile River North restaurant more than a year ago, it wasn’t clear what would take its place.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was tough on restaurants, the cannabis business was doing just fine. PTS, the owner of Consume Cannabis, wants to relocate a ma*****na shop from 6428 N. Milwaukee Ave. on the far Northwest Side to River North.
MORE
Cresco buying rival to become largest U.S. cannabis company
Illinois' pot market isn't up to s***f
Consume beat out four other w**d shops to land a deal with Sean Conlon, who owns the property at 605 N. Clark St., which was home to Rainforest Cafe. At 22,000 square feet, it’s the type of large, high-visibility location that would appeal to a ma*****na shop. The move was first reported by Block Club Chicago.
“It’s one of the two or three most heavily traveled corners in Chicago,” Conlon says of the former Rainforest location. “We had approaches nonstop.”
Subscribe to Crain's for $3.25 a week
If the deal gets approval from the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals, it would add to a growing cluster of pot shops in River North and make Clark Street the city’s boulevard of w**d.
Consume would join Cresco Labs’ Sunnyside dispensary at 436 N. Clark St., along with Ascend by Moca at 216 W. Ohio St. and PharmaCann’s Verilife store at 60 W. Superior St. GRI Holdings, a company that won two of the retail pot licenses in last year’s lotteries, has applied to the ZBA for cannabis zoning at 612 N. Wells St.
One potential challenge facing the deal is a state law that prohibits dispensaries from locating within 1,500 feet of each other. At least two other dispensaries appear to be within that range of the former Rainforest Cafe.
