It's now $2,000,000.00, Matthew?
On paper, your wife’s special permit to build out the Apothecary in Suite 4 at 160 Ayer Road lapsed on September 20, 2023.
On September 21st, I went to 160 Ayer Road and looked in the window at Suite 4. Dust and grime and cobwebs coated surfaces and collected in corners.
I have to tell you, Matthew, that I couldn’t help but feel a sad disgust over the waste your wife has caused Littleton: the waste of time, energy, and resources.
But that was the point all along, wasn’t it? Drag it out for as long as possible.
Delay, deny, deceive.
Well, with winter upon us and the price of heat a frightening reality for Littletonians living in poverty, I grew impatient with your wife’s (and by extension, your) stalling tactics.
Although I had yet to secure a formal “she did nothing” finding from the Planning Board, on the morning of October 16th, I filed the Certificate of Organization for SAGA Cannabis, LLC with the Secretary of the Commonwealth, paid the $500.00 filing fee, and made sure that my intentions were clear and transparent from the start:
SAGA CANNABIS, LLC IS FORMED AS A FOR-PROFIT ENTITY AS PER THE REQUIREMENT OF THE CANNABIS CONTROL COMMISSION.
SAGA CANNABIS, LLC WILL GIVE 100% OF ITS PROFITS TO ABOLISH POVERTY IN LITTLETON, MASSACHUSETTS
Later that morning, I went to 160 Ayer Road and, once again, looked into Suite 4: same cobwebs and dust and grime.
I’m thinking that the landlord over at 160 Ayer Road probably doesn’t care if the Apothecary is in Suite 4 or some other recreational cannabis shop—you know, like, What’s it to him if the check comes from your wife (or a law firm in Boston on behalf of who knows who) or from SAGA Cannabis?
Keep in mind that I fully intend to ask the landlord if he might just let SAGA Cannabis go in there for $1.00 a year and take the rent as some sort of tax deduction. You see, I deduce, from a fair reading of the deed for 160 Ayer Road, that the landlord paid $1.5m in cash for the building and can likely easily afford to be generous.
My hope is that the landlord will want to be part of something radical and newsworthy—something positive and meaningful in the greedy muck that is cannabis, and where, I believe, your wife (and by extension, you, Matthew) find yourselves hip-deep.
Around 10 o’clock in the morning on October 16th, I rang the bell at Suite 1. Despite arriving completely unannounced, I was warmly welcomed by a man, whose name I soon learned was Tushar.
I explained to Tushar my idea to end poverty in Littleton by giving away all the profits from a recreational cannabis shop, which, I hoped, I could put in Suite 4, where your wife did zippo. Tushar held his hands up and made it clear he wasn’t in charge. Then he called his boss, Miten (one of the Ms in MRM, according to Tushar), who was driving up from New York. In a language I couldn’t understand and with my SAGA Cannabis business card in hand, Tushar seemed to explain why I was there before handing me his cell phone so that I could coordinate meeting Miten.
A couple of hours later, I returned to 160 Ayer Road to meet, as scheduled, with Miten. I explained my idea for a recreational cannabis shop that gives 100% of its profits to people in Littleton living in poverty and pays its employees twice the commonwealth’s prevailing minimum wage.
I told him, “If the Planning Board says the special permit for Littleton Apothecary has lapsed, I’m going to have a proposal ready to pitch that end-poverty idea to the Select Board and get the license.”
He said, “She doesn’t have it anymore. She sold it.”
“Sold it? She can’t sell it. It’s not hers to sell.”
“Well, she did. $2,000,000.00.”
I have to admit, Matthew, that for a moment I selfishly thought, Well then, she owes me twice what I thought back in early 2022 when I was led to believe (based on what your son was overheard saying) that your wife had sold the Apothecary for (merely) a million dollars.
Although I reminded myself that the license isn’t for sale, I was curious about the $2,000,000.00, purportedly coming into the Nordhaus coffers and asked, “What? Sold it? To whom? Who bought it?”
“Don’t know.”
“Then how do you know she sold it?”
“That’s what I got from the town.”
“From ‘the town?’ Who from town said that?” I asked, fully prepared to hear him say “Chuck.”
Miten got cagey and said, “It’s just what I heard.”
Confident this line of inquiry had met a dead end, I asked, “What have you heard from Christine?”
Miten shook his head. “Nothing. I can’t speak to her because we have the same lawyer,” he said. “That was a big mistake. If we didn’t both have Blake, he would be able to tell me what’s going on with my tenant.”
It seems your wife and MRM share the same all-things-cannabis lawyer, Blake Mensing, who signed MRM’s Certificate of Organization just days after your wife (with you at her side) agreed to sell the Apothecary.
As I went on about POVERTY, BY AMERICA and Littleton’s 6.3% poverty rate and the profits going to help poor people here in town, Miten took me on a quick tour of Suites 1 & 2, where MRM will make cannabis-infused products.
With frustration and annoyance, it seemed to me, Miten pointed at the various heavy-duty industrial machines and priced them out: a million-dollar one here, a half-million-dollar one there. Miten told me that MRM has been “waiting and waiting for the Cannabis Control Commission” to issue MRM’s final license, i.e., permission from the commonwealth to “commence operations.”
“We have everything ready to go. But no permission,” he said. “So, we wait.”
At the end of the tour and at the front door, Miten told me, “Your idea is a good one—in maybe five or six years. But not now. We can’t make a donation now. We’re in a holding pattern."
Nothing I’d said up to that point could have led Miten to reasonably conclude that I was looking for a cash handout. In fact, I didn’t even get the chance to suggest MRM generously rent Suite 4 to me for $1.00 a year because I was met with the unsavory claim that your wife had sold for $2,000,000.00.
“I’m not looking for a donation, Miten. What I would like from MRM is a letter that says if Christine’s special permit lapses and if the town decides to give the license to me, then MRM would allow me to site the shop in Suite 4.”
“We’ll buy the license if it is available,” Miten said without missing a beat.
“It’s a license,” I said, “not an asset that can be bought and sold.”
"Well, your ex-partner sold it for two million. And if it comes up for sale, we’re going to buy it.”
When I restated my position that the license isn’t for sale, Miten shrugged and said, “I don’t about that. It’s the Wild West out there.”
And we all know what “Wild West” means, Matthew.
Lawless.
TTYS,
Jkb