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FUNDS WILL ENCOURAGE DIVERSITY, ARTS THAT TRANSFORM COMMUNITY
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
October 17, 2024 Date, Date, 20202020
EFFORT TO AMPLIFY LOCAL COMMUNITY THROUGH $164,000 PROGRAM By Christian Kallen
➝ Grants, 4
Photo by Christian Kallen
Local individuals and organizations are eyeing a “transformative grant program” launched by The Arts and Culture Collective of Northern Sonoma County, in partnership with Corazón Healdsburg, to let their creative dreams take flight and give voice to the underrepresented voices of the area. Applications for grants of up to $10,000 each are now being accepted for a Diversity in Arts Grant. According to a press release from Corazón Healdsburg, the program “aims to revolutionize equitable funding in the arts and amplify underrepresented voices in our community.” It gives preference to Northern Sonoma County artists from Windsor to C loverdale, including undocumented artists or culture workers, young or emerging artists from historically marginalized communities, and “artists with lived experiences as people of color,” according to the Diversity in Arts website at corazonhealdsburg.org/ diversity-in-the-arts. Grants of up to $10,000 will be awarded to successful applicants, out of a total of $164,000 to be shared among grant recipients throughout the year. Half of that, $82,000, will be available in this first round of funding. The application period is now open, and the deadline is midnight
NEW BEST FRIENDS Staff of the new Solful dispensary in Healdsburg, the day before its Oct. 11 opening. From left, Ryan Houston, Lisamarie Kennedy, CEO and cofounder Eli Melrod, Lorelei Krause, Athena Mendia, Lizzie Scally and Jordan Richardson.
Legal High Comes to Healdsburg SOLFUL’S NEWEST BOUTIQUE DISPENSARY OPENS WITH FREEBIES AND CROWDS By Christian Kallen
Less than a year after an extended city process to vet and choose two legal recreational cannabis dispensaries in Healdsburg, Solful opened its doors at 465 Healdsburg Ave., just three short blocks from the Plaza. It’s in a remodeled Queen Anne house originally built in 1891, now owned by financial advisor David Jones of Choreo, a.k.a. Enso Wealth Management. On one side is Purls of Joy yarn shop, on the other a driveway to a WestAmerica Bank branch and the local Goodwill, O’Reilly Auto, and Rite-Aid pharmacy and store. It’s at a crux in Healdsburg, a pivot point of commercial geography between
Ford much of the day. As customers were let in, after an ID check-in, to the 500-square-foot store.
driveable commercial and the walkabout downtown being energized north of the Plaza. “I think it’s what Healdsburg needs,” said property owner Jones in a sidewalk conversation near SingleThread. “We need to expand the northern foot traffic, and they’re doing just that— they’re pulling the retail north and just expanding it throughout town,” he added. The house has been tastefully remodeled in yellow and green, and the infrastructure upgraded to support the new retail business. If the public opening of the dispensary was supposed to be a secret, it wasn’t. Even before the dispensary opened at 10am on Friday, with a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored ribbon cutting, dozens of potential customers had lined up on the porch, down the walkway and up the avenue past nearby businesses. The line waxed and waned all the way to Sanderson
Neighborhood Impact
A cooperative member of Purls of Joy, the handcraft school and business located next door, said some people dropped in they had never seen before, and some made purchases. Maybe the dream of pulling business farther north wasn’t a dream after all. Turning the location over to a cannabis dispensary was not always Jones’ goal, far from it. Said the lanky, graying onetime City Council candidate, 2020, “I was getting a lot of phone calls from attorneys and owners of other cannabis companies, and I thought, what is going on here?” He ended up interviewing several, but “was really not impressed with the caliber and quality that
TRIBUNE’S ELECTION GUIDE NOW ONLINE LOCAL CANDIDATES, MEASURES IN CLICK-THROUGH PREVIEW Staff Report
Photo by Christian Kallen
INFORMED VOTING Read up on the issues and candidates
in our online guide.
Confused about what’s on the ballot this November? Start with The Healdsburg Tribune’s click-through guide to this upcoming local election, available now at healdsburgtribune.com. It’s based on an election overview that reporter Simone Wilson put together for a presentation
I saw.” That is, until he encountered Eli Melrod and Michael Jones, the CEO and COO respectively, of Solful. Jones, not a cannabis user himself, was excited when he saw their retail design and the products they were selling. “And I thought, these guys are perfect. A world-classcaliber cannabis company is what we needed to start off with, right?” Jones said.
A Dispensary for Healdsburg
The crew at the new retail store were well-trained for the opening weekend, and for several it was not their first. They knew what they were doing, and handled the first weekend’s boom with aplomb, guiding about 1,000 customers and the curious amid the tasteful displays and shelves of “product,” the harmless generic word for what was until recently an illegal possession.
at Enso Village, the new Zen-focused senior living community at the north end of town, in early October. The presentation, for the monthly meeting of the Enso Lifelong Learning group, was designed to orient relative newcomers to the area in advance of their first local election. Covered in the 13-page overview are the controversial local Healdsburg Measure O, a revision to the city’s Growth Management Ordinance, and Measure J, to limit so-called “factory farms” in the county. Also reviewed is city Measure R, to authorize nearly $50 million in school bonds, and county Measure I, to raise taxes by 1/4 of a cent to pay for more children’s health programs. Another county initiative, Measure W, would renew a 1/8-cent sales tax to support local libraries.
“It’s an industry that’s gone from prohibition to legal, essentially at the flip of a switch,” said Melrod, referring to the 2018 legalization of recreational cannabis in California. That flip of the switch led to some attrition in the cannabis industry, among retailers as well as cultivators. As in other business sectors, Melrod observed,“we see trends [of ] consolidation happening at rapid speed … So I think it’s just really trying to understand who you are, what makes you unique and different,” said the entrepreneur. “And for us, we’ve really just doubled down on that.” That being quality, and education. “Everything we source is sun-grown craft cannabis from small farmers in Northern California. We work directly with these small farms, and that’s a huge differentiator today,” ➝ Legal High, 5
Candidates
Introduced to voters were the five candidates for three seats on the Healdsburg City Council, five candidates for three seats on the Healdsburg Unified School District Board of Trustees, State Assembly District 2 candidates and the two running for U.S. Representative. While the Tribune does not endorse any issues or candidates, we hope this handy guide will help educate the voting public on the issues and individuals on the ballot. “Please also note that this is in no way a complete or formal analysis of each measure and candidate on the ballot,” Simone says. “It’s just a starting point, from the perspective of someone who generally keeps tabs on what’s happening locally. The rest is up to you!”