Marijuana Dispensary Reopens, Attracting Renewed Traffic

If you drove past the mini-mall on Colorado Boulevard, to the west of College View Avenue on Friday, you might have noticed a sudden uptick in traffic coming in and out of the parking lot there.

But unless you were there for a specific purpose, you probably wouldn’t know why: American Eagle Collective, a popular medical marijuana dispensary that’s one of three such facilities battling lawsuits by the City Attorney’s office, reopened Friday after a two-week hiatus.

The marijuana facility, better known by the initials “AEC” prominently visible as a gold-colored sign above the storefront’s reflective-glass doors, had shut down without any warning on March 22, leaving many to wonder whether the closure was temporary or permanent. Not even AEC's landlord, Penny Botsch, who runs a printing store, Adams Wilshire Engraving Inc., next door, knew the reason for the pot facility's abrupt closure.

What's more, there was a sense of suspense in the neighborhood that AEC's closure might have something to do with the federal crackdown on cannabis facilities and institutions that has been underway for the past few months in California.

A woman who was screening customers at AEC Friday evening, told Patch that the facility was closed because of a change in its ownership.

“They have closed before—only to reopen,” Asha Greenberg, an assistant deputy district attorney told Patch earlier Friday.

Greenberg said that a motion to seek a preliminary injunction against AEC is scheduled for May 31 in the court of Superior Court Judge John Wiley, Jr. The injunction is akin to an interim order intended to get AEC to vacate the store it is currently occupying because, as Greenberg put it, the facility is “in violation of the state’s narcotics abatement law and therefore should be stopped from distributing marijuana.”

The law, also known as the “drug nuisance abatement law,” holds that a property, mobile home, or vacant lot that is being used for drug activity is a nuisance to the surrounding community.

“We are asking the court to determine, before trial, that these dispensaries are violating the law and to order them to stop violating the law before the case goes to trial,” Greenberg explained, referring to AEC as well as Organic Healing Center and Colorado Quality Pain, the two other Colorado Boulevard pot dispensaries that are targets of the City’s lawsuits.

“If they stop breaking the law, the case will still go to trial,” Greenberg said, adding: “Civil penalties will still be assessed.”