The highly-anticipated cannabis industry incubator Green Street is now open. It’s a unique weed-centric building filled with offices for cannabis entrepreneurs, art galleries, consumption-friendly event spaces, and a ground floor restaurant named Gusto Green.
Green Street’s founder Rama Mayo has spent three years remodeling the 7-story space in downtown Los Angeles, California. Built in 1913, the historic building at 718 South Hill Street has been reborn. Its redesigned 67,000 square feet will hold 400 tenants. The only feature his team kept from the original building is the massive, dark wood spiral that winds up the central staircase. Its history is palpable.
Like many in-person businesses, Green Street’s road to opening doors has been filled with challenges due to the pandemic. “Before COVID, everything was rented out. All the office spaces were taken. Then COVID hit, and all the people left, so now we’re feeding people back in again,” says Mayo. “Today I feel like we’re going to for sure get there. I still feel like I’m riding the bicycle in Tour de France going up the hill and it’s super slow. It’s up there, I see it.”
Green Street is the headquarters of Green Street Agency, founded in 2013 by Mayo and Josh Shelton. Investor guru Gary Vaynerchuck joined the company in 2017. Green Street Agency has won AdCann awards twice for agency of the year and worked for clients in the cannabis space that include Wonderbrett, Satori, Eaze, Dixie, Post Malone’s weed brand Shaboink, and more.
One of the biggest draws of the space is the potential for creative collaboration and networking. “People are meeting each other,” says Mayo. “It’s working. I always look at it like I’m doing an apartment building, but it’s not, really. It’s an apartment building if all the tenants were best friends. Where people get together, create their own events, and collaborate. The goal is to not just fill the building, but fill the building with companies like competitors, frenemies, friends, people who want to get together as a community.”
To Read The Rest Of This Article By Lindsey Bartlett on Forbes
Published: January 19, 2022
Founder & Interim Editor of L.A. Cannabis News
