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Days before people swarmed marijuana dispensaries across Illinois to get their first taste of legal weed on Jan. 1, 2020, a clout-heavy Chicago businessman named Carmen A. Rossi established a company aiming to cash in on the expected “green rush.”
On the company’s incorporation papers, he listed Alex Acevedo, a son of former state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo, who had recently lost a Chicago City Council race, as a manager.
By February 2021, though, Alex Acevedo had been charged, along with his father and his brother, with tax crimes after being swept up in the federal investigation of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
But that didn’t keep the weed startup from being given a conditional “social equity” dispensary license in a lottery that August.
Alex Acevedo was convicted in January 2023 of failing to report income from lobbying for his brother’s firm. Prosecutors called him a “tax cheat” and said the firm was a “virtual black box” that the brothers figured tax authorities couldn’t penetrate.
Around that same time, Rossi — a lobbyist, lawyer and city contractor with wide-ranging businesses — had his own problems. In December 2022, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot returned campaign contributions she’d gotten from Rossi-affiliated companies after the Chicago Sun-Times reported she’d taken the money despite a past mayoral order barring mayors from taking campaign money from City Hall lobbyists.
Rossi agreed months later to pay a $5,000 fine for breaking lobbying rules, asking a city official to help secure licenses to operate parking lots on Chicago Public Schools property.
Now, the cannabis startup he helped launch is in the process of converting a former bank building in Bolingbrook into a dispensary.
At a hearing in July 2023, Acevedo’s wife Juliana Ceja presented a pitch to Bolingbrook’s plan commission to approve the weed store. At the time, Rossi told the commission under oath that he and Ceja were among the partners listed on the conditional license issued by the state.
Now, his spokesperson Becky Carroll says Rossi isn’t on the license. Carroll says he’s just the firm’s lawyer and landlord who also is “providing event, promotion, social media and staffing services” through his firm 8 Hospitality, which includes Hubbard Inn, Joy District and other bars and restaurants.
Rossi wrote an email on Thursday to Mayor Mary Alexander-Basta to address the issue, Carroll says.
“It has come to my attention that I might have misspoken at that meeting,” Rossi wrote in the email. “To be clear, I am not a member of the tenant-licensee doing-business-as Cookies and do not have any direct or indirect ownership interest in Cookies.”
Rossi’s name was also listed on zoning documents related to the dispensary, and he signed an agreement with Alexander-Basta that described him as a member of the company. Carroll says Rossi “is an operating partner for the building, developer of the site and zoning attorney for the property and, therefore his name is on those documents in those capacities.”
The new store would be the fifth Cookies-branded dispensary in Illinois. The San Francisco-based Cookies was launched by rapper and social media influencer Berner. It’s grown into one of the most recognizable weed brands in the world. Cookies says it has 77 stores spread across the United States, Puerto Rico, Israel and Thailand. A company spokesperson didn’t respond to questions.
Its business is based in part on lending its name and logo to other cannabis operators, a model that has led to lawsuits from partner companies.
“They own the intellectual property of the brand and the products, but they don’t own the license or the store here in Bolingbrook,” Rossi told the plan commission.
The startup’s “principal officers” will need to pass a criminal background check for it to be granted a state license to open, according to Chris Slaby, spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the agency that issues the licenses.
The company, originally called Latino Health and Revival LLC, initially listed Acevedo and seven other people as managers in filings with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. Only one of them is listed in the most recent filings: a lawyer who gives an address at Hubbard Inn.
It’s unclear who was on the application for the conditional dispensary license because that information is deemed “confidential” by the state, according to Slaby, who says applicant groups can remove a principal officer but can add another only under “exigent circumstances,” such as a death.
Removing a principal officer could potentially affect a company’s ability to fulfill the state’s social equity requirements.
Acevedo didn’t respond to a request for comment. He now lives in Honolulu, working as a nurse practitioner.
Rich Hein / Sun-Times file
Lobbying for weed interests
Rossi no longer is a registered lobbyist at Chicago City Hall. though he is registered to lobby legislators in Springfield to support a campaign by the Alliance of Independent Cannabis Entrepreneurs, a trade group led by rapper Vic Mensa and other African American business leaders. They’re pushing lawmakers to support minority businesses, which the legalization move was supposed to benefit.
A week ago, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, former state Sen. Patricia Van Pelt and a group cannabis business owners urged lawmakers to address the state’s pricey licensing fees and regulations.
“The truth is the dream of being a cannabis business owner in Illinois is falling far short,” said Ford, who represents the West Side in Springfield.
Gov. JB Pritzker pushed for legalization of recreational marijuana and recently has described Illinois as “the national leader in diverse ownership for this industry.”
Pat Nabong / Sun-Times file
Pritzker reappointed Rossi to the board of Intersect Illinois, a statewide economic development organization. A social media post shows they participated in “a fireside chat” last year at the Hubbard Inn, Rossi’s restaurant.
Rossi is among high-profile figures licensed to lobby Pritzker and other state officials in support of the cannabis trade group’s campaign. Others include former Ald. Howard Brookins, former state Rep. Coy Pugh and Jason Monsour, former chief of staff to state Rep. Lamont Robinson.
Approved despite opposition
Bolingbrook’s village board banned cannabis businesses in August 2019 but rescinded that ban less than three years later.
Cookies Bolingbrook plans to open in a one-story building that previously housed a Bank of America branch at 190 S. Weber Rd. Rossi told the plan commission that the dispensary team was “under contract to buy” the old bank building.
The Cookies operators said they planned to redesign the interior, invest more than $1.2 million “in tenant improvements” and complete work in less than five months, according to their presentation to the plan commission.
A “community support plan” laid out commitments ranging from hiring from “the local area” to launching and funding an after-school program and paying staffers and other people to volunteer at Bolingbrook events.
Another dispensary, called Ivy Hall, opened in Bolingbrook in June 2023.
The following month, when the Cookies operators sought zoning approval they needed, some Bolingbrook residents objected. Teresa Carrillo, who was one of them, noted that voters had rejected cannabis in an advisory referendum.
“To the local government bodies, everything that you … have done so far regarding the promotion of this gateway drug ignores the majority of the voters in Bolingbrook,” Carrillo said. “It is thoughtless and promotes revenue on the backs of our most vulnerable. And there is certainly nothing honorable about that.”
The proposal was unanimously approved by the commission, then the the village board.
“}]] The “social equity” startup linked to businessman / lobbyist Carmen Rossi and Alex Acevedo, a son of former state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo, who was convicted of tax crimes, is primed to open a Cookies-branded dispensary in Bolingbrook. Read More
