DOVER – Jenn Starke and her brother Bill Roher, co-owners of cannabis business The Farm, had hopes of opening a recreational adult-use retail site in Frankford with location approvals and the conversion license in hand.
Now, they can’t get a building permit.
Two years after Delaware legalized cannabis use and started designing the framework for sale regulations and licenses to manufacture, sell and test the substance, many business owners like Starke and Roher are left in limbo. The most recent date to open businesses was April 1, 2025.
But local leaders have pushed back with a “not in our backyard” mentality. Ultimately, zoning restrictions in counties and municipalities have since made it near impossible for recreational adult-use cannabis business licensees to find a location for their business operations despite approvals to operate from the state.
Sen. Trey Paradee (D-Dover), Rep. Ed Osienski (D-Newark) and others have introduced a bill that would allow medical marijuana compassion centers which were granted a conversation license like The Farm the opportunity to run its retail operations. It would also prohibit the denial of a building permit to any licensee “if the improvements comply with the physical requirements for a property zoned for that use.”
Senate Bill 75 would also require a county to allow a retail site to operate during minimum hours of operation, like liquor stores. Ultimately, if passed, SB 75 would trump any previously agreed upon county regulation for recreational adult-use marijuana retail sites.
The change is necessary, according to Starke and Roher.
“Our location in Sussex County was approved by the [Marijuana] Commissioner and Sussex County put their ban out in May after we were approved. But we were still in the process and hadn’t gotten our building permit yet, so they denied our building permit and now we are paying rent on this building… It’s very frustrating and it’s costing us a lot of money,” Starke said.
While The Farm continues its uphill battle of opening a new location for the recreational adult-use industry in Sussex County, Starke told the Delaware Business Times that it wasn’t that difficult when they started the medical side of their business.
“Harrington has always been a supporter of our business and the industry. Others, not so much,” she said. “When we were starting, the only zoning requirement we had was to be 500 feet from a school. That’s it.”
Now, she added, new licenses for the recreational market are subject to all out bans, or they could be required to set up shop 1,000 feet or more from a school, church, daycare or government building. Sussex County has the strictest zoning regulations in the state, barring marijuana businesses in all but a small handful of locations in unincorporated land.
“When you look at a zoning map…it is hard to find any place to rent for a store or manufacturing location,” Starke explained.
To Starke, a lot of misconceptions seem to be the driving force behind the zoning regulations that are clogging up the start of Delaware’s recreational-use marijuana industry.
“A lot of them think, for example, that people are lighting up right outside our businesses and that just isn’t the case in a regulated market. At the illicit shops, that absolutely happens, but it can’t happen at ours because of how the industry is regulated,” she said. “In fact, we often get asked by police to provide camera footage because of the security measures we have in place at our locations.”
Other factors at play
Traci Southerland, double social equity testing facility licensee and the membership coordinator for the Delaware Cannabis Industry Association (DCIA), said those stricter zoning restrictions are one of the biggest hold-ups the industry is currently facing, but it’s not the only issue.
There’s confusion from the state about whether social equity license holders can open while they continue to get ready. Southerland’s testing facility, to be called Safe Leaf Analytics, is in limbo while she waits for news that other businesses can start operating.
As a testing facility operator, she must wait for the cultivation process to begin before she can start providing services to clients in Delaware – which ties into the how available the real estate is in Delaware.
“It takes some time. And part of the problem here is that those folks can’t find real estate to operate. I’m OK because I’ll have a lab facility,” she told the Delaware Business Times.
Southerland added that outside securing the financing, she can find the lab space easier than others who want to open a retail or cultivation spot at the moment.
“I’m hoping to open up at the STAR lab at the University of Delaware’s campus because they have everything there,” she said. “But these other businesses will need to find a facility and they can’t right now because of zoning regulations. If they can’t find a location, that impacts my business.”
The way the law is written is that counties cannot ban marijuana businesses from operating, however they can impose zoning restrictions. Municipalities can still weigh both of those options by law.
Southerland said she’s heard from many new licensees who are currently struggling with the industry that seems ready to pop at any second either through her waiting-in-the-wings testing business, or via her role as the membership coordinator for the Delaware Cannabis Industry Association (DCIA).
“We have heard from a lot of social equity licensees by now who are struggling to find a place. If they’re not coming to me as a future testing facility, asking for advice on how to find a location, they’re calling the DCIA and, the unfortunate thing is, right now, nobody has the answers because there are so few places available,” she said.
She said the requirements around daycares seem to be the most challenging, as she’s found a daycare center on almost every corner.
“If you look at a map, there’s really not many spots available for these businesses to go,” she said.
Roadblocks a plenty
There’s also unexpected curveballs. Delaware had applied for approval for the fingerprinting and background check process to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but has been denied as the request didn’t “qualify pursuant to federal law,” according to Spotlight Delaware. Officials have recently attempted to apply again.
There is also another roadblock standing in the way – Delaware’s first Marijuana Commissioner Rob Coupe stepped down from his post. Another commissioner has yet to be identified and thus a new start date cannot be determined yet.
But advocates say these growing pains shouldn’t hold up the entire industry as some businesses are closer to being ready for operations than others.
“You have to understand that while we’re waiting for this to open, the illicit market continues to thrive, opening more shops every day and that’s not safe,” Southerland said. “I wanted to do testing because I want safe and healthy products for myself, my husband and our people. These other shops that our open right now, the smoke shops, they’re not regulated, and their products are not tested. You don’t always know what kind of chemicals you’re putting into your body.”
While she waits to open her business, others, like Starke and Rohrer, remain ready for the next surge of marijuana sales. The Farm already claimed a portion of Delaware’s medical marijuana market which the pair said made it an easy decision to also apply for a conversation license when the recreational use industry was approved.
But even as they stand ready for an opening day, the business waits in limbo over money lost in the meantime.
The business dumped thousands of dollars into licensure fees and more into the development of products, preparing for the business to reach the industry given start dates.
“It’s a lot,” Starke told DBT. “And we can’t do anything to put that money back into the business until we can start operating and the same is true for the social equity licensees out there.”
As the first start date came and went, and the second date seems to be doing the same, Starke and Rohrer said their business continues to wait so it can recoup the money it sunk into the industry in the first place. Rohrer said their business had a huge advantage in the market as it already owns property in Harrington next to his Agrolab facility.
“What’s really frustrating to me is that all these discriminatory zoning requirements are slamming the regulated market. Meanwhile, the illicit market, or the non-regulated market, is exploding. There are many stores or vape shops that are selling it, but they’re not licensed,” Starke said.
Beyond the safety of untested products currently available in those unregulated shops and the uncertainty felt by business owners waiting in the wings, Delaware is facing another downfall due to the delays in starting the recreational-use industry – lost revenue. State officials estimated the sales tax would generate between $28.8 and $42 million per year.
Correcting the path
Mark Lally, former president and CEO of First State Compassion Center and a charter member of the Delaware Marijuana Task Force, said changes will be necessary so all of Delaware’s business owners can work toward a thriving marijuana industry.
First State Compassion Center was recently acquired by Massachusetts-based MariMed which had worked with Lally for years. Lally will stay on as the general manager for MariMed. He and MariMed CEO John Levine said they both hope the industry continues to grow in Delaware through the discriminatory practices and into a thriving market.
“The good part, as you know, without saying, all of this comes with new jobs, better products, better service, expansion, availability, convenience. There’s just so many things under that that are really going to make a difference,” Lally told DBT.
“It’s going to get bigger as people learn that it does have medicinal values and properties and it’s not as dangerous as we thought it was and things like that, but of course it always comes down to responsible use no matter what you use” he added. “I loved getting into it and I have ever since. I don’t ever want to leave. I love it.”
For their part of the market, they said they’re grateful that First State Compassion Center can now formally lean on MariMed’s national contacts to make it easier for their company here in Delaware considering discriminatory practices.
Banking issues is just one example of many that still plague cannabis-related business owners, but it wasn’t a huge hurdle for First State Compassion and MariMed thanks to Levine’s contacts.
“We’ve had [a lot] of banking relationships and I’m happy to say that we are probably the first cannabis company that ever got a real mortgage here. That’s a big statement to say. . . and they’re real rates. I mean, our building in Wilmington is at a rate of 4.5 % and that’s unheard of in the cannabis industry even today,” Levine said. “It helps that we were the first in many ways.”
For now, as they look forward to a new era in their cannabis business through the recreational adult-use market, Levine and Lally said they’re ready for the industry to finally open like many other business owners throughout the state.
“We’re in a position because we were number one and still are and had the majority of the product already available for our patients and we wanted to make sure that, through our wholesale market, we were also supplying all of our competitors here in Delaware, that we had the capacity to keep that up. And then we can ramp up with a little bit of notice, it won’t be much. We’ll already have enough to start everything, but we’re already prepared. We’ve made all of the preparations. When the switch is pulled, we can start growing,” Lally said.
“That way, we can grow with our competitors in the market, too, by providing them product and the social equity people, we want to help them get started and they’re the ones who will probably be starting first so we certainly want to make sure that they have everything they need from us to be successful, so it’s almost like giving back,” he added. “But they have to get there; they have to be able to open at some point.”
Two years after Delaware legalized cannabis use and started designing the framework for sale regulations and licenses to manufacture, sell and test the substance, many business owners are left in limbo. The most recent date to open businesses was April 1, 2025, but that does not seem to be happening now. Read More
