The Mile High City is getting a new club, but there won’t be a shot glass or smoke machine anywhere to be found. Instead, Denver will welcome its second licensed social use cannabis consumption space, allowing adults 21 and older to relax, socialize, and, of course, get stoned.
According to the Denver Post, Vape and Play, a “multi-station, saloon-style vape bar,” will open this fall in the city’s Broadway district, a strip of real estate with a handful of dispensaries within walking distance. Per Denver’s social consumption regulations, Vape and Play will not sell any marijuana products, but the bring your own bud format should be easy to accomplish with so many pot shops nearby.
City officials finalized Vape and Play’s social-use license Friday afternoon, officially signing off on the state’s second club to legally allow adult-use cannabis consumption.
Denver finalized Initiative 300, the city’s social use legalization law, in the summer of 2017. But in the year since, only one consumption-friendly business has opened to the public. The Coffee Joint, which opened in February of this year, currently allows cafe visitors to eat edibles, use tabletop vapes or handhold pens, and do dabs using torchless e-nails.
Other prospective social use businesses have attempted to open in the months since, but have been otherwise thwarted by Denver’s strict zoning regulations. According to Initiative 300, any club allowing marijuana use must be at least 1,000 feet away from any schools, daycares, parks, and other child-friendly spaces. But while that rule has been so strictly enforced that a cannabis spa was denied a license over 19 feet of sidewalk, recent research from California has suggested that marijuana businesses in close proximity to schools has had no effect on teenage pot use.
Luckily for the owners of Vape and Play, the heavily trafficked Broadway district is an anomaly in the densely populated city, dubbed “the Green Mile” for its concentration of pot businesses. With neighborhood approval quickly secured, the local Overland Park Neighborhood Association was happy to welcome another green storefront to the community.
“This will be one of the first legal spaces for tourists, eager to partake in our cannabis culture, to safely and legally consume the products they are already purchasing here as they visit,” Vape and Play co-owner Taylor Rosean told the Post. “Not to mention we will be providing a space for locals who rent and are not allowed to consume on their property per their lease, or just for people who would like to enjoy cannabis in a space that isn’t their living room.”
Rosean and his partners have not yet announced what type of entertainment will accompany the vape bars, but Vape and Play is expected to open sometime in the coming months.
Follow Zach Harris on Twitter
