Businesses looking to get in to the medical marijuana industry in Illinois are approaching local communities to let them operate within the community’s borders, sweetening the proposal with offers to donate to a local organization or give the community a cut of the profit.

It’s all part of “a good location is part of the price of doing business.”

Chicago Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin has more:

Monday is the deadline for businesses to apply for state licenses, and among the many provisions for potential operators is that they have local approval for a place to grow or sell medical cannabis and can point to “community benefits.”

Competition for approved sites has gotten so intense that some municipalities are requiring that businesses pay them a cut of their revenues if they want local support.

In Elk Grove Village, no fewer than nine competing businesses have entered into preliminary agreements with the municipality. Should any win state approval to operate, the businesses each have agreed to donate up to $75,000 to local nonprofit groups and to fork over up to 5 percent of their gross sales to the village.

Elsewhere in the Chicago area, developers are offering special contributions to get local support — inverting the more typical practice of local governments offering incentives to lure businesses to town. One suburb is even creating its own charitable foundation to collect and spend the cash infusion.

In a state with a long, often corrupt tradition of pay-to-play, the arrangements have raised some concern among business owners and watchdogs groups. The payments are not prohibited, as long as they’re not enriching elected officials directly, regulators say. But they must be disclosed for consideration when the state reviews business applications and awards licenses.

“I think it’s fair,” Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson said. “No one has balked at it, so obviously they know it’s fair, too, because of what we have to offer.”

State regulators will ultimately dole out licenses for up to 21 cultivation centers and 60 dispensaries statewide. Patients who have a qualifying medical condition can be certified to buy marijuana, officials hope, by sometime next spring.

The communities willing to welcome the businesses stand to cash in through various means.

Such payments are not uncommon in other states with medical marijuana, where businesses sometimes donate up to 10 percent of sales to their host communities, said Michael Mayes, CEO and president of the Quantum 9 cannabis consulting company in Chicago.

“In Connecticut you see incredibly lofty community benefit plans, because municipalities were (not) accepting of the program itself,” Mayes said. “It depends on the municipality and public perception. The best plans I’ve seen say the money will help build a school or roads. They have a specific community benefit.”

Tribune presents 12 ways to help heal Chicago

Roughly one year ago, the Chicago Tribune editorial board embarked on what they called the “New Plan of Chicago.” They analyzed all the problems facing Chicago and asked for reader feedback on how to solve the struggles. They now present the top 12 proposals as they start on the next phase of the plan.

From the Chicago Tribune editorial board:

Ask Chicagoans how to fix their city and you’ll hear powerful ideas to rescue flailing schools, cut violent crime, create attractive jobs and help families thrive. We know this. We asked. Last October, we launched our Plan of Chicago project to fill in blanks left by famed civic architect Daniel Burnham’s 1909 plan. His blueprint to build Chicago set in motion a century of astonishing growth and prosperity. But he didn’t deliver his follow-up plan to fix this city’s grave social problems.

Today: Twelve proposals we’ve culled from thousands.

Below are the headlines of the 12 ideas from the editorial board, along with a brief description of the goals for each. For more in-depth information on each of the 12 ideas, make sure you check out the editorial.

  1. Schools as tools – Help kids learn, parents cope, people find jobs
  2. GED Chicago – Helping adults get a better education, luring employers to those increasingly skilled and literate workers.
  3. Sister Neighborhoods – Harness the prodigious generosity and brainpower of neighborhoods to help each other.
  4. It takes a City – Provide more support for at-risk children — and at-risk parents.
  5. Innovation Houses – Revitalize struggling neighborhoods.
  6. eBay Chicago – Improve Chicago without relying on more state and local dollars that don’t exist.
  7. City in a Garden – Empty lots and abandoned homes plague neighborhoods.
  8. Exploiting Chicago’s greatest resource – Create jobs and major economic development by leveraging Chicago’s untapped fresh-water assets.
  9. Oases in the jobs desert – Award TIF money, or eliminate property taxes, for small businesses that locate or expand in struggling neighborhoods.
  10. Kids and careers – Many children grow up blinkered to the breadth of job opportunities Chicago offers. They don’t realize that while a job is valuable, a career is invaluable.
  11. Hubs and STEMS – Harness the tech skills of high schoolers across the city to help small businesses.
  12. Mutual of Chicago – Create a “social investment fund” to bring businesses, light manufacturing plants, incubators and services into jobs-starved neighborhoods.

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