If the cannabis legislation outlined in parliament this week is approved in next year’s referendum, a heritage church in Christchurch will become a cannabis café.
The proposed legislation would legalise the sale and consumption of cannabis at licensed premises.
Cookie Time founder Michael Mayell has partnered with Abe Gray, the founder of New Zealand’s first cannabis museum to build a cannabis education centre in the historic Shands and Trinity buildings.
The Trinity building was formally Trinity Congregational Church. It was damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes.
The community hub will contain a museum, a hemp emporium, a plant medicine shot bar, a cannabis dispensary, a café, a hemp eatery and an alcohol-free night club.
“After the earthquakes and the subsequent re-developing of the city, Christchurch lost a great deal of its heritage,” says Mayell.
“More than 1300 buildings in the inner city have been demolished”.
“It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to preserve such beautiful buildings as these.”
Trinity will be used for the museum during the day, an education space Mayell dubbed “cannabis university” in the evenings, and for the alcohol-free plant shot bar at night.
The café and restaurant would sell hemp food, a boutique with a range of hemp products and an alcohol-free plant shot bar.
Hemp seeds will be cultivated and used to make milk for ice cream, butter and cheese and the bar would have kombucha on tap, medicinal teas and mushrooms in the diner.
The business is trading as the Whakamana Museum Limited.
Whakamana launched a Pledge Me campaign to transform the church building on November 12.
On December 5, with 11 days to go, 219 people had pledged $126,531. The minimum target is one million dollars
Whakamana shares are also available for purchase.
Source
- stuff.co.nz
- cannabisinstitute.ac.nz
- pledgeme.co.nz
- Image: screen shot pledgeme.co.nz