Brookfield trustees on Monday voted unanimously to approve the special use request for a dispensary located at 9500 Ogden Ave. against the wishes of public commenters who live on the residential 4000 block of Dubois Boulevard, which the property borders.
After nearly 90 minutes of discussion, including several impassioned appeals from residents on the block during three public comment periods, the village board voted 5-0 to approve the special use application, which is required to open a cannabis dispensary anywhere in Brookfield.
Trustee Kyle Whitehead was absent from the meeting, but he shared a statement that Village President Michael Garvey read expressing his support for the dispensary, in line with the rest of the board’s votes. Other members of the board also explained their rationales before taking it to a vote.
“I, too, live half a block from Ogden Avenue, not far from the proposed location and a vape shop. I understand the importance of considering how new businesses may affect nearby homes and the character of the area,” Trustee Julie Narimatsu said in response to public commenters. “I love this neighborhood with all my heart and want to see only good things for the Ogden Avenue corridor, but it is a commercial corridor, and I view a regulated cannabis dispensary as a reasonable retail use in this context.”
This was the second request for a special use permit to open a dispensary in Brookfield that involved Tanya Griffin, the CEO of cannabis consulting firm Water + Trees. The forthcoming dispensary will be owned and operated by IC Collective, an Illinois-based cannabis grower.
Griffin’s previous effort to bring a dispensary to Brookfield would have seen it located at 9046 31st St., at the corner with Park Avenue, and operated as Prolific Dispensary. The special use permit for that location was voted down 4-3 by the village board in February.
During the public comment period, Rev. Vicky Carathanassis, who lives on the 4000 block of Dubois Boulevard, spoke for about 15 minutes, in which she accused the board of dishonesty and hypocrisy for supporting the permit application while having voted against the special use on 31st Street.
“The last time a location for a dispensary was being considered, it was voted ‘No’ due to how many residences were next to it,” Carathanassis said. “The [Energize Ogden] master plan we envisioned together says that right next to this location will be luxury apartments, so if that’s true, why is building a dispensary right next to these current and future residences sensible, but building it next to those previous residences wasn’t?”
Several members of the board later on Monday said they based their votes on the specific zoning district that 9046 31st St. falls in rather than the residents’ concerns, which mirror those of residents on Dubois.
“The characterization that it was turned down because it was in a residential neighborhood or there were residents above it is not the reason I voted against it,” Garvey said. “The 31st Street corridor is a different zoning district. It’s a C-4 district, which is a different type of business district [than on Ogden Avenue], and I voted against that cannabis dispensary because I didn’t feel it met the requirements of the C-4 zoning district.”
The permit application for 31st Street drew similar controversy in December and earlier this year, with nearby neighbors decrying the increased traffic they believed it would bring to their residential neighborhood.
Carathanassis’s husband, Manni Carathanassis, also spoke out against the dispensary. He was the only public commenter at the May 28 planning and zoning commission meeting on the special use permit application for 9500 Ogden Ave. In the ensuing month, he created a Change.org petition against the proposal, which he said had garnered 217 signatures as of Monday night, including all of his neighbors on the 4000 block.
Other public commenters who spoke out against the dispensary included Chris DiBraccio, the owner and operator of Imperial Oak Brewing, which neighbors the forthcoming dispensary, and Chris Isidoro and Anthony Isidoro Juarez, two brothers whose family live on Dubois Boulevard.
“What would happen when my [two-year-old] sister’s going to Congress Park, she’s going to Park, she’s going to LT?” Isidoro Juarez asked. “People say, ‘My house is next to this park. It’s over here. It’s by the library.’ She’s going to say, ‘I live in front of the cannabis dispensary.’”
At previous meetings, Griffin has said she hopes the dispensary can open by November, with estimates that it will generate about $150,000 in sales tax revenue for the village in 2027, scaling up to about $300,000 by 2029.
Brookfield trustees in May 2023 unanimously approved a special use permit for a cannabis dispensary at 8863 Ogden Ave. that was set to be operated by The 1937 Group. The development stalled at some point during construction, and Brookfield officials rescinded that special use permit earlier this year.
