A new medical marijuana shop with Durango roots is now open for business on Main Street in Cortez.
Durango Organics, owned by Aaron Miles and Jonny Radding of Durango, quietly opened earlier this month to patients and has spent the past few weeks settling into its first location outside of La Plata County.
The new Cortez location’s client base is growing, as the brand’s medical-marijuana patients who made the 40-minute trek to the original dispensary in Durango now have another option closer to home.
“Business has been good,” said Scottie Sindelar, manager of the new Cortez location. “A lot of people, I think, shop at our store in Durango that live in Mancos, Dolores or Cortez. ... We’re getting a lot of their (Durango store’s) patients.”
The product inventory is smaller than the original store in Durango – the Cortez location offers nine strains of marijuana compared with the original Durango location’s 40 strains – but the quality-centric cornerstone of the business remains the same, Sindelar says.
“We grow all our own flowers in house at our grow facility in Durango,” he said. “The quality of our products speaks for itself.”
The store at 1104 N. Main St. also offers a wide selection of edibles and topicals, Sindelar says.
Hallie Hallberg, a budtender at the Cortez location, said, “We’re willing to listen to patients and make suggestions based on what they’re using it for.”
Although Durango Organics is the third medical dispensary in Cortez, it hopes to be one of the city’s first retail marijuana shops.
The company applied for a retail license earlier this fall but ran into a zoning snag with the city because of a provision that disallowed retail marijuana sites within 1,500 feet of public parks; Durango Organics is around the corner from Parque de Vida. The city revised the park set-back provision in November, and Durango Organic’s retail permit application is pending.
Sindelar says the shop would need to hire at least three additional employees if a retail license is granted.
