Neon pot-leaf signs like this are a no-no at D.C. dispensaries.

Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn and wife Stephanie Kahn have a simple plan for bankrolling their controversial proposed medical-marijuana facility on Blair Road NW. "We plan on financing this from our personal life savings," he says.

How much are we talking? Well, that's a bit, um, hazy at the moment.

The biggest expense will likely be the price of the herbal remedy itself, according to Stephen DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif., which both Rabbi Kahn and fellow aspiring dispensary operators with the nonprofit District of Columbia Patients' Cooperative have toured in preparation for creating their own facilities. DeAngelo tells City Desk, "Out of every dollar we take in, about 62 percent of that goes to paying for the actual medicine. The balance of that goes towards paying our rent, our payroll, our insurance—all the other typical expenses that a business has."

While not a single legal pot plant is yet in production in the District, thus making the budgeting process quite difficult for would-be sellers, we can safely assume that all other costs aren't even the half of it. That said, Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposed medical-marijuana regulations at least provide specifics about some of the other start-up costs:

• The annual fee for a medical marijuana dispensary registration shall be ten thousand dollars ($10,000) + an initial application processing fee of five thousand dollars ($5,000)

If you plan on growing your own, tack on an additional ten grand:

• The annual fee for a cultivation center registration shall be five thousand dollars ($5,000) + an initial application processing fee of five thousand dollars ($5,000)

Next, you'll need to register all your corporate partners...

• The annual fee for each director, officer, member, incorporator, or agent registration shall be two hundred dollars ($200)

And every "bud-tender" on staff:

• The annual fee for an employee registration shall be seventy five dollars ($75)
• The annual fee for a Manager's license shall be one hundred and fifty dollars ($150)

You may also need a permit for moving the medicine between manufacturing and distributing facilities:

• The fee for a transport permit shall be twenty-five dollars ($25)

Not included in the regs: your necessary certificate of occupancy ($33 application fee).

Then there's the whole matter of rent. According to real estate analysts Delta Associates, the average retail rent in D.C. (as of the end of 2009) is about $35 per square foot annually. For a modest 1,500-square-foot dispensary, such as the one the Kahns are proposing, that works out to roughly $4,375 each month, or $52,500 for the whole year. (Add on an additional month's rent for the probable security deposit.)

Next up, payroll. The proposed regs specify that each dispensary "shall be staffed with at least two persons during its hours of operation," with those hours of operation being anytime between 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Let's say you open on a more limited basis, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. A dispensary employing two staffers at all times (minimum wage: $8.25 per hour) would thus run up at least $1,155 in weekly payroll (or, $60,060 annually).

Then there's security to think about. The Kahns, for instance, are planning to hire an off-duty cop to monitor the premises, beginning from a half hour before opening until a half hour after closing. A police officer working "reimburseable detail," as it's called, runs about $55 an hour—roughly three times the price of your average security guard. Let's say you go the cheaper route ($18 per hour); that's $1,386 per week (or, $72,072 annually).

Already, we're looking at well over $200,000, without even factoring in the cost of the required video cameras and alarm system, insurance, a good licensing lawyer—and, most importantly, the pot itself. If we accept DeAngelo's 62-percent figure on the cost of product, then we're talking around half a million dollars (if my math is correct).

In its own financial impact statement, the District predicted the average cost of marijuana sold at dispensaries at about $350 per ounce. Therefore, a dispensary would need to sell about 1,429 ounces of herb annually to cover its basic costs.  That's about 119 ounces per month. Patients, meanwhile, are limited to just two ounces per month, and the District expects to register only 300 patients citywide in the first year. Which means dispensary owners may need to dip into their own inventory to make the math look right.

Graham campaign poo-bah Chuck Thies had this reaction via e-mail:

"Not surprising at all. What has the Chamber of Commerce ever done for Ward One?  They represent downtown business interests. Maybe Jeff Smith should move downtown.  He really doesn't seem to like living in Ward One."

You'd think Graham's close ties to the taxicab industry would have put him over the top. Zing! OK, that was a cheap shot. Apologies.

Robert L. Allbritton

Position: chairman and CEO, Allbritton Communications Inc.

Address: 3124 Q St. NW (Georgetown)

Observations: Allbritton—owner of Politico, WJLA-TV, and NewsChannel 8, inter alia—bought the massive Bowie-Sevier House for $24 million in 1997. Apparently he didn't have much left over for the snow budget. The manse has frontage on both Q Street and P Street; the much shorter south frontage was shoveled by 4 p.m. yesterday, albeit in skinny single-file fashion. The sidewalks in front, on Q Street, were hardly touched—though it appeared that someone had cleared one side of a dual staircase ascending from the street to the door. The rest of the walk—the part the plebians actually walk on—was thick with boot-compacted snow.

Grade: D-

Q Street stairs:

P Street frontage:

Playing Jesus in this scenario, says owner Jody Taylor, would be Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans.

"The Black Rooster will crow again," Taylor says. Asked what happened to prompt the reversal of fortune for what had been slated to become a General Services Administration conference room, "I don't really know to be honest with you. Jack Evans had a lot to do with it....Once I talked to the landlord, he was extremely gracious. Everybody came to terms. It's good all around."

And the reprieve came just in the nick of time. Taylor had put up the bar's assets in an online auction, and today was the last day he could have canceled it. "They had people flying in from Chicago and Atlanta that were interested," Taylor says. "Just came down to the last minute practically."

The final papers aren't signed just set, but Taylor says landlord Richard Cohen gave him the go-ahead to re-open, something that could happen in two or three weeks.

"I am very grateful at this point to a lot of people," Taylor says.

Colbert King recently wrote a column on the racial paranoia bubbling up on Cleveland Park's listserv. He followed up our own blog post on the subject. Whether residents there are racist or not we can not say. Those stories only prove that people still live in Cleveland Park. There are always the holdouts.

Video and more, below the jump!

With all the bad news surrounding Cleveland Park, we were a bit scared to visit its Connecticut Ave. strip. Had it succumbed to a sort of lawlessness? Were people freaking out over their 'hood losing its Slurpee machine? Would there even be anyone around to talk to? Had its residents started migrating to the hipper Van Ness, a neighborhood that can actually support a Starbucks?

One thing we did prove: You can still get a parking ticket in Cleveland Park.

Attention local urban sophisticates! You will not be able to visit an Apple Store in the District of Columbia anytime soon!

That scoop comes courtesy of the underappreciated, under-Webbed Current newspapers, which explained in last week's editions [PDF, see pp. 1 and 19] that plans for the District's first Apple Store are held up in a thicket of regulatory approvals, from the Georgetown advisory neighborhood commission and the Old Georgetown Board.

Earlier this month, both bodies rejected Apple's design—the third the company had submitted for the property at 1229 Wisconsin Ave. NW, a Georgetown storefront the company has owned for more than a year—because, as the Current's Carol Buckley puts it, it "would not fit into Georgetown."

Nay, not even this testimonial, delivered by an Apple project manager, can cut through the red tape: "Steve saw this design and really loves it."

That's Steve Jobs, people. Steve Jobs!

When will you hoity-toity bureaucrats wake up and realize that when Steve Jobs loves something, that means you must love it, too?

The Current describes said design as such: "a glass first story with a solid stone upper facade punctuated by a large window shaped like Apple's logo." The Old Georgetown Board, charged with preserving historic preservation standards, "felt that the design turned the building into a billboard," according to a spokesperson. The ANC, charged with being parochial nitwits, raised concerns that the latest design was "too modern."

What are you missing out on, obstructionist Georgetowners? Well, as the Washington Business Journal put it in 2007, you're missing the "one retail store that any town, and any developer, covets above all others. A store with such cachet that any retail center blessed enough to land one becomes instantly certified as a platinum-level shopping mecca, with clientele who are urbane, savvy and have loads of disposable income."

Georgetown, though, does not covet thy neighbor's urbane, savvy, income-disposing customers—got plenty of those already.

So suck it, Jobs! Shoulda gone to Chinatown!

Flickr photo by ping ping