Blackburn News – Adelle Loiselle – Sept 11 2017

“I think you’re going to see the strip change very quickly,” says Higher Limits co-owner Jon Liedtke about the impact legal marijuana will have on Windsor’s downtown.

Liedtke anticipates what he jokingly refers to as a “tsunami” of young Americans crossing the border from Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana to sample legal weed.

“There’s 55-million people in those four states,” he says noting that millions of them smoke pot already. “If 1% of them were to decide to come over to Windsor on a Friday night to purchase $20 worth of cannabis from a government store, that could be 25-, 35-, 70,000 people. It’s a mind boggling situation.”

Unless the City of Windsor and the business improvement associations outside of downtown Windsor can incentivize businesses like his to spread out in the city, Liedtke believes those venues will want to locate in the core.

“We’re walking right now, into what I believe, is a recreation of the early 90s with our downtown,” he warns. “I’m trying to stress how important it is that the BIAs create an incentive program to try to lure businesses to your area, so we don’t see the proliferation of them, right where they get off the bus.”

Liedtke admits his lounge could be overwhelmed, a situation that he admits could also be very beneficial for his business.

For the moment, he says he and his business partner have no plans to expand at Higher Limits.

“If we get overrun, we get overrun,” Liedtke laughs. “We want to see how things go.”