SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Two years ago, 21 business owners filed a total of 79 applications to attain one of five medical marijuana dispensary licenses in the city of Sioux Falls.
A ping pong ball lottery at city hall determined which five businesses would garner the coveted licenses. A packed room watched in palpable anticipation. One of the “winners” yelped in jubilant glee.
“I still can’t believe it,” East River Farms LLC co-founder Josh Winter said after the event, laughing and smiling. “I’m high — on excitement.”
Winter admitted part of that elation came from the possible windfall from operating one of the city’s first places medical patients could access legal cannabis.
Two years later, the one dispensary license for Minnehaha County was up for grabs. Over the course of a month, only one group applied.
Shangri-La LLC — a multi-state operation based out of Missouri that already has a cultivation center in Brandon where marijuana buds are grown and then sold to local dispensaries — has signed up to set up its own shop in the Pyro Fireworks facility on East Arrowhead Parkway on the far east side of Sioux Falls, just outside the city limits. The company is waiting for