A California-based cannabis company is planting its first Northern Nevada flag in one of Reno's most walkable commercial corridors. MediFarm, a subsidiary of publicly traded Terra Tech Corp., has purchased the building at 1085 S. Virginia St. - currently occupied by the Scotland Yard Spy Shop - for approximately $1.2 million, with plans to open a medical marijuana dispensary under the Blüm brand in April 2016. The location puts cannabis retail closer to residential blocks and everyday foot traffic than any dispensary currently operating in the Reno-Sparks metro area.
A Location That Changes the Conversation
Reno's existing dispensaries - Sierra Wellness Connection in Reno and Silver State Relief in Sparks - sit at a remove from dense urban activity. Blüm on S. Virginia won't have that buffer. Midtown is a genuine mixed-use corridor: coffee shops, bars, boutiques, apartments above storefronts. That proximity tends to generate neighborhood-level scrutiny that more isolated dispensaries sidestep entirely.
Terra Tech CEO Derek Peterson says the company moved proactively. "We didn't run across any concerns," he said, crediting a deliberate outreach effort to neighboring businesses before any permits were filed. Whether that goodwill holds once the doors open is, as ever, a different question - but the approach reflects a broader industry shift toward treating community relations as an operational requirement rather than an afterthought.
The Scotland Yard Spy Shop, for its part, isn't disappearing. Owners David and Debbie Currier used the sale proceeds - roughly double what they paid for a replacement property across the street - to secure new space, where they plan to relocate and expand their inventory. Not a bad outcome for a quirky independent retailer that might otherwise have been squeezed out by rising Midtown rents anyway.
Nevada's Rules Made This Possible - and Attractive
MediFarm's interest in Nevada wasn't incidental. The state's medical marijuana regulations were written with an unusual degree of openness for the industry: applicants don't need to be Nevada residents, and the state observes multi-state reciprocity, meaning cardholders from other states can legally purchase here. That combination is rare. Most states with medical cannabis programs impose residency requirements on both operators and patients, which caps market size and walls out experienced multistate operators.
For a publicly traded company like Terra Tech, those rules matter in ways that go beyond the immediate dispensary footprint. The ability to deploy capital across state lines without residency friction - and to serve an out-of-state patient base that includes Las Vegas tourists - makes Nevada a structurally different opportunity than, say, a state where the entire supply chain must be locally owned and operated.
Blüm will open sourcing product from licensed Nevada cultivators. MediFarm is simultaneously building out its own cultivation facility, which would eventually bring the supply chain in-house - a common strategic move for vertically integrated cannabis companies looking to protect margins and ensure product consistency.
Hiring Local, Watching the Recreational Clock
Peterson said the company intends to hire locally, with stated priority given to military veterans. Hiring events are scheduled to begin in January, ahead of the April opening. That's a compressed timeline, but not unusual for a dispensary build-out - the regulatory approvals are the long pole in the tent, and once those are cleared, the interior work tends to move quickly.
The longer strategic horizon here, though, is recreational legalization. Nevada voters are expected to weigh a recreational marijuana measure in November 2016, and Peterson's read on the state's potential is pointed: he believes Nevada's recreational market, if legalized, could rank among the two or three largest in the country. The arithmetic isn't complicated. Las Vegas draws tens of millions of visitors annually, and a state with legal recreational cannabis and multi-state reciprocity already baked into its medical framework would be positioned to absorb that demand almost immediately.
That's the bet Terra Tech is making - not just on Midtown Reno, but on Nevada as a whole. The Blüm brand is simultaneously going up near the Las Vegas Strip, with two additional Clark County locations in planning. Northern Nevada is the quieter piece of that portfolio. But a dispensary in a walkable urban neighborhood, staffed locally, operating under a consumer-facing retail brand? That's what normalized cannabis commerce looks like - and Reno's Midtown is about to find out whether it's ready for it.
