Marijuana Store Will Make People Hungry, Stimulating Joliet’s Restaurants: Guerrero

JOLIET — Outgoing Joliet City Councilman Cesar Guerrero, who will be taking over Joliet Township’s government as the newly elected Democrat township supervisor, gave his most memorable political speech at Tuesday night’s vote in favor of the Bisa Lina marijuana dispensary for 2121 West Jefferson St., the former location of the NAPA auto parts store.

Although the Joliet board of zoning voted 5-0 against the special use permit for the marijuana dispensary, the Joliet City Council has the ability to completely disregard the zoning board’s recommendation. The Council followed the wisdom of Mayor Terry D’Arcy and Councilman Guerrero and voted 7-2 in favor of bringing Joliet’s West Jefferson Street its very first cannabis retail store.

RISE operates the only two existing marijuana businesses in Joliet, one by the Louis Joliet Mall and other tucked within the Rock Run Creek Business Park. During the past two nights of Joliet City Council meetings, people in the audience spoke negatively about RISE. Many suggested that RISE has outrageous retail cannabis prices and a limited variety of products for its customers.

“I want to make a comment on this,” Mayor D’Arcy spoke up. “I know some people that have been helped immensely by medical marijuana. I know a guy that 10 years ago was given three months to live. And his hospice nurse took him off the opioids and gave him medical marijuana – 10 years ago. And he’s still here to tell his story.

“I’ve had some calls. There’s a woman with M.S. that has to travel out of town. RISE does not offer the variety of medical marijuana that’s available. And I know that there’s connotations with cannabis, but I really feel like in our world today, there are good things that we see and particularly in the medical side of this industry. That’s just my comment.”

Joliet Can Overcome Its Negative Reputation As Prison Town: Guerrero

D’Arcy’s comments were followed by the political speech of his life for Guerrero, who is in his late 20s and is the youngest elected official on the Joliet Council by many years.

“Mayor, I think that there’s changing perspectives regarding medical marijuana use. I think a lot of the negativity that’s been associated with it is quite frankly a dated perspective,” Guerrero offered. “We’ve seen examples, countless examples of people that have benefited from medical marijuana use. There’s been a few points of concern raised, among those being security. I think it’s already been mentioned before, if you’ve driven past, you don’t even need to go and shop and participate, but if you’ve ever driven past the dispensaries that already exist in town, or nearby, they have sometimes security better than local banks.

“There are multiple officers, multiple doors that you have to get clearance through, presenting your ID just to get into the front lobby. That’s before you even get into the facility itself,” Guerrero told everyone. “There were questions how this might impact homelessness in the surrounding area. And I don’t think that stands as a counterpoint as to why we would do this because quite simply, somebody who’s experiencing homelessness is not going to buy marijuana in a dispensary. If it is readily available in a black-market situation. Why would somebody who is struggling to eat, to survive, go and pay much higher price and taxes within a legal system? So this idea that dispensaries somehow draw in homeless, that they draw in and attract crime, is just absolutely incorrect … There’s incredible security at these facilities. Again, cameras, lights, just physical barriers that would prevent anybody from getting into the building.”

Eventually, Guerrero reflected back on Joliet’s history and our nation’s history as a nation of mass incarceration, as a nation that put people in prison for many years for crimes involving marijuana – for crimes that many states, including Illinois, have abolished.

In what might be their final trip to Joliet, Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi rocked a crowd of roughly 5,000 people for the Blues Brothers Con 2024 in the Old Joliet Prison last August. John Ferak/Patch.

“Further, as just one final point, our city of Joliet, has, for a long time, held a reputation of being a prison town,” Guerrero reflected. “I see some folks from the museum here who can testify to that, and if we ever hope to get past this reputation of being a prison town, which many, many people have mentioned to me that we would like to be thought of as something else other than a prison town, then I think that it’s important that we recognize the historical trends that brought us to that place in the first place. That we recognize that the war on drugs existed, that over policing happened, that high levels of incarceration, for something that today, is no longer considered a crime, happened.

“Those are all historical truths. They’re all historical facts that have affected people that lived in the city of Joliet, that still live in the city of Joliet. There are folks that live in our communities, who at one point, would have been incarcerated for what is today no longer a crime,” Guerrero shared. “And if we ever hope to get past this reputation of being just a prison town, I think we have to kind of swing the pendulum in the opposite direction now and recognize that yes, these historical truths happened, again, the war on drugs happened, mass incarceration happened, and we recognize that and are now taking a stance opposite of that to say this is a legal and regulated industry and we’re open to it.”

Scooby Doo Gets Mentioned By Guerrero

“I think Joliet would benefit from this because if you’ve ever been friends with anybody who’s a consumer, if you’ve ever partaken yourself, if you’ve ever seen an episode of Scooby Doo, you know that people get hungry,” Guerrero revealed. “And so when we talk about economic development and adding restaurants to Jefferson Street, which is our main commercial corridor, then it just seems to make sense that people are going to get hungry. They’re going to stay, they’re going to shop, they’re going to get something to eat. So for me, this really presents an opportunity to be a cornerstone of economic development in an area of Joliet that has seen economic degradation over many years. This could be a vital turning point to turn that around completely. And so for all of those reasons, I’m completely in favor of this project and I hope that the rest of the Council agrees.”

Jim Lanham, who spoke in favor of Bisa Lina Cannabis Dispensary during the zoning board meeting in March, said he was glad the Joliet City Council approved the marijuana store on West Jefferson.

Lanham noted that he works in the private security industry and does work at marijuana retail dispensaries in two different Illinois communities.

“The revenue is much needed and will be even more when the state grocery tax expires Jan. 1, 2026. Replacing that loss with a tax that helps everyone is great,” Lanham remarked after the vote. “It’s why it’s imperative to add one more dispensary too. I’m glad the city is modernizing its business model to current times and not trying to recreate ‘the golden mile,’ let’s get this money and keep it here and its ancillary spending benefits to other businesses. Now, hopefully, the city can work on places like The Star Inn and Fenton’s (Motel) if people are worried about kids walking by. Really. I mean people even get arrested just pulling into places like the Fenton.”

Image via city of Joliet