| Coming soon to Worcester: the Cannabis Control Commission.
The young state agency that oversees the rapidly growing legal marijuana industry in Massachusetts agreed Tuesday to search for a location in Worcester to make its permanent headquarters. The CCC also agreed to find a satellite office near an MBTA station.
“This is a statewide agency and it is important that we operate around the state and we’re expected to be around the state,” Executive Director Shawn Collins said. “Having a location really in the central part of the state will allow us to get to every corner of the commonwealth with relative ease and I think also there are cost efficiencies with being out in central Massachusetts.”
The CCC unanimously approved the issuance of a request for proposals (RFP) for just more than 13,000 square feet of office space in Worcester, with a preference for a location that would be accessible by public transportation, and a second RFP for a roughly 5,000-square-foot satellite office within a quarter-mile of an MBTA station.
“Having a satellite office in Boston allows us to keep some personnel in the city of Boston … and that is intentional to allow folks to be headquartered here but also to allow for swing space for any professional staff that may need to be in the metro Boston area,” Collins said, adding that he expects that he and many of the five commissioners would bounce between the two offices.
When the CCC discussed possible headquarters locations earlier this year, CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman presented a list of possible locations that included downtown Boston, another neighborhood of Boston, the northern suburbs like Malden or Somerville, southern suburbs like Quincy or Braintree, a location in the Route 128 belt like Waltham or Burlington, and somewhere in the MetroWest/I-495 region like Framingham or Westborough.
Worcester was added to the list at the behest of Commissioner Jennifer Flanagan, who previously represented northern Worcester County in the state Senate.
Hoffman said Tuesday that the CCC also wanted to apply its mandate to make the legal marijuana industry open and accessible to communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs to its selection of a headquarters.
“Worcester is one of the communities that has been disproportionately impacted and that was not irrelevant in our thinking,” Hoffman said. “It was not the only factor, but it certainly was a major factor in our thinking about where we want to locate our office.”
