Leicester Holds Emergency Meeting Over Pot Shop Traffic Concerns
LEICESTER (CBS) -- The Leicester Board of Selectmen organized an emergency meeting Monday night to discuss traffic concerns caused by a large number of customers at the town's new recreational marijuana shop. Cultivate on Main Street has been a lot more popular than they expected.
Leicester Police have working to keep traffic moving on Route 9 while the store is open.
"It's very organized," said one customer. "Everybody is flagging everybody down. I asked a cop which way to go to get weed and he told me, so that feels weird."
According to the town manager, Cultivate estimates 1,000 customers have been served each day they have been open, a number that has not shrunk since opening day.
The meeting, which was called on Sunday, went on for about two hours and included positive and negative feedback.
Mark Castonguay said the traffic has blocked his driveway on Route 9. "I don't want them in front of my house," he said. "Asking them to back up and pull forward so we can back out of the driveway."
"I bought this house because it was old Route 9 and not a busy road," Castonguay told WBZ-TV. "Now it's very busy. This is busier than (the) Mass Pike."
He was among the dozens of residents asking town officials and staff from Cultivate what else can be done to lessen the impacts on the neighborhood.
Harry Brooks of the Leicester Board of Selectmen said, "the people that are upset are going to stay upset unless they see results. I think more results can happen. Let's find out in the next week. See what happens with what they are doing: adding the 80 spots and possibly moving some employees."
Others at the meeting thanked the police and Cultivate. "The guy is overly successful and you want to punish him for that? I'm sorry that's just not the American way," said John Shocik.
Cultivate sent out a statement Monday that read, "We are seeing an extended period of high volume sales at Cultivate. While that is really exciting, the most important thing to us is that we are being good neighbors in the community. We will be working with the town to improve parking and continue to make this rollout as smooth as possible."
