Brown Budda Opens Cannabis Shop in Southampton, but Town Threatens Court Action

Southampton Town has threatened to take a second cannabis dispensary to court because the business opened without meeting the demands for the property imposed by the Town Planning Board.

The state-licensed dispensary Brown Budda opened its retail showroom on Wednesday morning, November 12, in the former Guillo Pools building at 1533 County Road 39, showcasing its focus on cannabis products made in Suffolk County — including some made on the South Fork — and wellness-focused brands.

The company has also resumed selling its products online for delivery through its website.

But town officials say that Brown Budda has not yet complied with all the conditions of its commercial site plan, which was approved by the Planning Board in June.

Just hours after the business opened its doors on Wednesday, the Town Board authorized its attorneys to go to court to seek a temporary restraining order to force the business to close until it meets the modifications at the property that the site plan approval was conditioned on.

Town Attorney James Burke said that the town is conferring with the firm that is handling the town’s other cannabis-related lawsuits and will decide whether to proceed with an injunction request next week.

Brown Budda co-owner Marquis Hayes said in the shop on Friday that the business has met all the conditions imposed by the Planning Board in the site plan approval, except the construction of a sidewalk across the road frontage of the property. Constructing the sidewalk, he said, is something that he said his landlord has to have contracted but Brown Budda will pay for.

He said the construction of the sidewalk is “in the works,” but without a revenue stream from the business being open, the company couldn’t afford to pay for the sidewalk to be built, he said.

“The sidewalk is being built. We never said no to anything the town wanted. We just didn’t have the funding,” Hayes said. “We’re going to work it out. We’ve met everything else. The sidewalk they want me to put in the front, I went to South Fork Asphalt and they said you can’t come to us to do that, the county has to give us that contract, and there’s a process for that.”

Hayes and his partner, Kim Stetz, filed a lawsuit against Southampton Town last summer, claiming the town’s site plan approval process had already delayed them from opening for nearly a year after the business was approved to begin selling cannabis by the state, and exceeds the limits of local authority under the state’s cannabis law.

The suit accused the town of costing the business millions of dollars in lost revenue by delaying the opening for more than a year. But Hayes said the company is not looking for monetary compensation, just to be able to get its retail business up and running.

Dispensary license holders who had planned to open a shop in Hampton Bays have also sued over the town’s approval process, and the State Office of Cannabis Management issued an advisory opinion last month saying the town’s site plan process appears to exceed the powers granted to it by the state law.

Southampton Town has, in turn, sued the state agency, arguing that it is misinterpreting the intention of the New York State Legislature and overreaching in its claim that towns cannot impose the zoning regulations they apply to all other commercial businesses on state-licensed pot shops.

In October, the town got a restraining order against another cannabis dispensary about two miles to the east of Brown Budda, called Charlie Fox, that had opened for business without any town permits. A judge granted the restraining order, forcing the business to close.

The company has now filed a formal site plan application for the property, which the Planning Board has expedited its review of and could approve as soon as this month.

Brown Budda had begun selling its cannabis products for delivery only in fall 2024 after the state gave them a delivery license and before it had applied to Southampton Town for its site plan approval at the County Road 39 property. But the town told the company that the delivery business still constituted a new use of the pool company building and could not operate until the site plan approval had been granted.

Hayes said that he and Stetz are eager for their legal matters to be taken up by the courts so they can keep filling out their new space — with things like Brown Budda doughnuts, a coffee stand, and an array of cannabis and merchandise.

Long Island’s cannabis shops are the highest grossing in the state, he said, and the Hamptons market could be even more robust, he hopes.

“We’re just going to get to court and resolve it as soon as possible,” Hayes said. “We just want clarity on how to satisfy them and also be able to serve our customers. I think we’re going to get there.”