Rooted in Roxbury is expected to open its doors on Boston’s Newbury Street this summer after Canadian marijuana giant GTI failed in its bid to launch a dispensary in the same location.

The old Boston, where the most important thing is who you know and what political strings you can pull, is still alive and well, if a legal battle playing out in state court is any indication. 

Rooted in Roxbury is poised to open a recreational cannabis shop on Newbury Street in August, a breath of fresh air in an industry too often dominated by big companies and their overwhelmingly white investors and executives. 

It’s a good example of the new, more diverse Boston that is taking shape, exemplified by the election of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu last fall. 

Behind the scenes, however, the original team of investors who tried and failed to open a pot shop on the Gold Coast of Boston’s retail scene are still battling over who is to blame for messing up the opportunity of a lifetime. 

And in typical Boston fashion, the case revolves around claims of political connections – and the ability to maneuver through a complicated city and state permitting process – that may not have been all they were cracked up to be, according to lawsuits filed in Suffolk Superior Court. 

 Too Cool for Old-School 

Geoffrey Reilinger, who first proposed building a cannabis dispensary at 331 Newbury St. back in 2017, is suing his former partners: publicly-traded Canadian pot giant GTI, the company’s CEO and CFO, and a subsidiary. His case could potentially generate millions of dollars in damages. 

Reilinger, whose mother chaired the Boston School Committee under Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, began smoking pot in the early 2000s as a way to deal with multiple sclerosis flareups, according to court documents. Impressed with the results, he went on to launch his own marijuana startup, Compassionate Organics, and began moving ahead with plans to open a medical marijuana dispensary on Newbury Street. 

But after Reilinger sold his firm to GTI in 2018 and came on board as consultant, GTI stopped using the politically savvy consultants he had hired, including one of Boston’s top PR mavens, former Menino press secretary Dot Joyce.  

They apparently got the news when their invoices stopped getting paid, the lawsuit contends. 

“The Defendants believed they were sophisticated enough of operators to open in the City of Boston without using local 13 professionals. This was untrue, and further contributed to the delay in opening the Newbury Street Location,” Reilinger’s attorney writes in a complaint filed in Suffolk County Superior Court. 

In fact, one top GTI executive, in an email discussing Joyce, summed things up rather colorfully: “This feels like the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. We are in a major crossfire and bleeding heavily.” 

No matter that, according to Reillinger, Joyce had made a name for herself as the go-to PR person for aspiring cannabis wheelers and dealers in Massachusetts.

In typical Boston fashion, the case revolves around claims of political connections and the ability to maneuver through city bureaucracy. 

Compounding matters, GTI decided to redesign the planned medical cannabis dispensary on Newbury Street against his advice, using a London firm with no experience in the murky world of Boston politics and trigging a new round of reviews by city officials, Reilinger’s lawsuit contends. 

 Local Concerns Cause Headaches 

GTI eventually decided to pull the plug on the venture, cutting a deal to lease the pot shop to Rooted in Roxbury in exchange for a 9 percent stake. 

And in a twist, Joyce, the public relations consultant so airily dismissed by GTI as not worth the price, is back in the deal – representing Rooted in Roxbury. 

The first store’s collapse proved particularly expensive for Reilinger, who contends he was squeezed out of as much $2 million for his work teeing up the licensing of the new Newbury Street pot emporium, plus millions more from the cut of the revenue he had been promised for the shop’s first several months in business. 

However, it is Reilinger who has it all wrong, contend lawyers for GTI, who have filed a counterclaim. When it came to all his big talk about Boston political connections, GTI says the firm’s former partner was all hat and no cattle. 

Moreover, GTI and its top executives allege they were never informed that Reilinger, in a bid to defuse neighborhood opposition in the Back Bay, negotiated a lease amendment that

Scott Van Voorhis

would have only allowed the Newbury Street building to be used for a medical marijuana dispensary, barring a recreational pot shop. Reilinger, in a court filing, denies that he kept investors in the dark. 

“Mr. Reilinger’s representations about himself and his connections and influence were knowingly false,” states the counterclaim filed by GTI and the other defendants. 

Ouch!  

The political and business culture in Boston may be changing, but maybe not as much as one would like to think.