Weed All About It! Finally, a New York Licensed Legal Cannabis Store has Opened in the Neighborhood

At last! Indoor Treez, Hell’s Kitchen’s first legal cannabis dispensary, co-owned by Fikri Nagi and Wesim Alsaidi, has arrived on 8th Avenue between W38/39th Street.

The journey to finally opening took over two years to navigate. “I would have never thought this would happen, and now I’m living it,” Fikri told W42ST. He is a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary ( CAURD ) license holder, a licensing program run by the New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) to provide opportunities for individuals adversely impacted by the prohibition of marijuana.

Fikri was arrested many times in the 90s, when he dealt weed in the Bronx. “It feels so great. I don’t have to look behind my back,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about people’s gonna rob me, I don’t have to worry about cops. I feel relief, I feel good, I feel like I can raise a family now, and be a person.”

All of the store’s surfaces are painted white, although they may soon receive a redesign. The building above is home to music studios, so the occasional drum beat can be heard in the background. Glass cases displaying cannabis products, all grown in New York State, fill the center of the space, where staff circulate, helping to orient customers.

A security guard scans all visitors’ IDs as they enter. Purchases are made on tablets and products are picked up from a counter at the back of the store.

“We want to make it like a premium type of vibe, but also a safe environment for the customers because there’s 1000s of illicit shops ,” said Wesim. “We’ve met a lot of customers who haven’t smoked in a long, long time, because they haven’t had a trusted source. So we want to be that trusted source.”

Wesim and Fikri are lifelong friends, whose families immigrated to New York from the same village in Ibb, Yemen. They have a background in retail and management, with Wesim’s family running a chain of gas stations.

Fikri came up with the name Indoor Treez, “because everybody loves indoor.” He’s referring to “ indoor marijuana ” — cannabis grown in a greenhouse or other inside environments, which some people prefer to “outdoor” cannabis. Currently, all the cannabis sold at the dispensary is grown outdoors, but Fikri and Wesim expect that may change come fall.

“When I used to sell my weed everyone would ask me, ‘is this outdoor or indoor?’ Once I said indoor they were like ‘Oh my god, let me get some,’” Fikri recalled. To him personally, “it has the same effect; as long as it gets you high it makes no difference.”

He also chose the name because, after spending years selling cannabis outdoors, he is now able to invite his patrons indoors, into an inviting, licensed shop.

Fikri consumes cannabis to relieve stress. He has no intentions of returning to buying, or selling, cannabis products from the streets. In fact, he said, “now I’m afraid to buy from outside. … The weed that’s not lab tested makes me cough and makes me nervous.”

He sympathizes with the owners of the city’s illicit shops, but at the same time would like to see more done to shut them down. “They should know that there’s a lot of licenses out there, and I think a lot of people should have some kind of heart [and] respect to the community to not sell them this type of stuff that they didn’t even know where it comes from,” Fikri said.

Unlike the illicit shops, Fikri and Wesim have been waiting a long time for this opportunity. After New York State legalized cannabis in March 2021, Fikri applied for a dispensary license in September 2022.

He was among the first group of justice-impacted individuals to receive a provisional license several months later. He and Wesim then spent months trying to convince landlords to rent him a space, many of whom were initially unaware that legal dispensaries could exist. The two signed a lease at their current location in July 2023, but the space’s past tenants, a gift shop, who were on a month-to-month lease, dragged their feet moving out.

Only after they secured the location did they receive their official license, and seven days before opening the OCM gave them the greenlight after an inspection.

Business has been steady for the past month, Wesim said. “From what I’ve noticed everyone is in a good mood. When they step into this shop, they’re happy, smiles on their faces.”

The dispensary is open from 8am to 2am, and so far the local community hasn’t raised any concerns about the hours, Wesim said. One worry was that people might linger outside the shop after making a purchase, but so far this hasn’t been an issue.

An expansion is already on the horizon. Two doors down, the space previously the illicit cannabis shop Bing Bong will soon be occupied by Indoor Treez. The two shops are connected around the back, and customers will enter through one and exit through the other in a u-shape, Wesim explained.

Everyone’s excited to be open. “It’s been great, it’s been calm, I love working with cannabis, it’s one of my favorite things in my life,” said Amanda, an employee. “Business is picking up, I feel like I’m getting busier and busier every day.”

Another employee, Jojo, added, “Everybody’s cool, I feel like we all work together symbiotically and it’s always good vibes.”

Getting the store open after two years in the making was an exhilarating experience for Fazia Naglen, the general manager and a longtime friend of Fikri and Wesim. “Everyone was so excited, it honestly just worked out in the best way possible,” she said.

In the future, Fazia would love to expand the business. “Maybe we can become a cafe, or maybe we can be a bookstore, cannabis in different avenues, and not just a retail store,” she said.

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