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GR's first medical marijuana dispensary opens

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The first medical marijuana shop in Grand Rapids is open for business.

Fluresh Provisioning Center, located at 1213 Phillips Ave., opened at 10 a.m. to serve its first customer. People started lining up to get in around 6:30 a.m.

"Everyone is telling us that they're so excited that we're open, and that it's a beautiful space, and they're thrilled that there is medical cannabis available in their community,” said Lindsay Levin, chief marketing and sales officer.

Levin said Fluresh is working on launching a grow facility in the same site as the store, which a former automotive plant. The company is already growing its own product in the Detroit area.

“It's really about quality and consistency, we believe in delivering the highest quality product available for patients, and we thought that it's an amazing opportunity to be able to grow ourselves and have that cannabis here and grown and created on site, and that will be launching later this year,” Levin said.

Yolanda Belcher was the second person is line this morning. She says she’s glad to have a local location, because she has had to travel long distances to get medical marijuana.

"If you go to exit 9, which would be Nunica, yeah you're looking at 30 miles away, If you're looking at Lansing you're going an hour, so the other day I went to a few dispensaries in Battle Creek, it was an all-day adventure, so it’s so much nicer to have something so close,” Belcher said.

The dispensary will apply for a recreational license when Grand Rapids starts accepting applications in April.

Fluresh will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays.