Ex-Theater Reopens As Pot Shop

Jake Serafini and Jose Anaya showed up to the ex-Long Wharf Theatre site on Sargent Drive Thursday morning — not to catch a play by Samuel Beckett or Anna Deavere Smith, but instead to buy an eighth of Scout Breath and some weed gummies on opening day of the city’s newest cannabis dispensary.

Serafini and Anaya — both of whom are cannabis-focused labor organizers with the Westport-based Local 371 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — were two of a handful of customers to head in to the new INSA cannabis dispensary location at 222 Sargent Dr. at around 9 a.m. The dispensary is open seven days a week.

Thursday marked the first day of INSA being open for business in a New Haven Food Terminal warehouse building that for more than half a century was home to Long Wharf Theatre. That regional theater left Sargent Drive and moved into itinerancy in 2022, and continues to put on plays at different spots across New Haven. The Springfield, Mass.-based cannabis company INSA won final permission from the City Plan Commission to open a dispensary at the 222 Sargent Dr. site in July 2023. 

Thursday’s opening means that there are now two legal pot shops in New Haven: INSA on Long Wharf, and Affinity Health & Wellness on Whalley Avenue, which opened in January 2023. 

INSA Retail District Manager Fran Cardano opened the dispensary’s locked front door and checked customers’ IDs to make sure they were at least 21 years old before allowing entry.

She and the site’s general manager, Lynn Deffendall, then walked this reporter through the theater-turned-pot shop. 

Where once was Long Wharf’s box office windows, now stand a half dozen kiosks that allow customers to browse through the wealth of flower, pre-rolls, vapes, edibles, and other cannabis products they can buy at the Sargent Drive site. Cardano showed how customers browse by strain — indica or sativa — and can sort by a variety of categories, the most popular being ​“potency.”

Where once was Long Wharf’s main stage and audience seating area, meanwhile, now are glass display cases advertising those same cannabis products and their purported therapeutic benefits.

Deffendall emphasized that none of the actual cannabis goods are out in the open, in the display cases or anywhere else where customers are allowed. Instead, the flower and pre-rolls and other cannabis consumables are all stashed in a bank-style vault located behind the checkout desks, open to employees only. 

INSA’s Long Wharf spot already has 20 employees, Cardano said: five managers and 15 associates. 

“I think it’s wicked cool,” Deffendall said about the former site of a beloved regional theater becoming a place to buy cannabis. A former supervisor at Dunkin’ Donuts, Deffendall said she herself does not smoke or otherwise consume cannabis. But she’s a big believer in the product’s benefits, stating that cannabis can help people manage everything from anxiety to appetite to pain and fatigue and inflammation.

One customer, a downtown resident who declined to share her name or be photographed for this article, showed up on Thursday to buy some watermelon-flavored sativa gummies, a five-pack of Humboldt Sour Diesel Curaleaf, and a container of Blue Sky Haze Pre-rolls. 

Serafini and Anaya, meanwhile, told the Independent that they intended to buy, respectively, an eighth of flower of an indica strain called Scout Breath and some gummies.

“It makes me feel good,” Serafini said about why Scout Breath over other products. And it helps him sleep.

Serafini and Anaya weren’t there on Thursday just as any old customers. They were also wearing T‑shirts emblazoned with the words, ​“UFCW Cannabis Workers Union,” beneath the picture of a cannabis leaf emerging like a sunrise against a yellow background above a field of green.

Serafini, Anaya, and a third person who declined to be named or photographed all said they work for UFCW, with Serafini and Anaya working for a local based out of Westport.

They made clear that they came out to INSA’s newest location in New Haven on Thursday not to try to organize the shop’s employees into joining the union — but instead to celebrate the growth of an industry that they want to benefit workers and customers alike across the region.

“We support the industry,” Serafini said, showing up not just to new dispensaries but also local zoning board meetings across Connecticut and Massachusetts, speaking up in favor of new cannabis dispensaries and enterprises. ​“This is kind of like the new gold rush.”