If not for the sculpture of a rolled joint in the Union Square outpost of Travel Agency, you might not know that you’re entering a cannabis store. However, the space – designed by the architecture firm Leong Leong – is one of the few licensed dispensaries in New York City. Since opening in February 2024, the brand – a partnership between Anna Hankin-Biggers and Paul Yau and the Doe Fund – has expanded to three locations this year. Each features a minimalist and particular travel theme.
“The big idea is how do you create a sanctuary or a portal to a new destination,” Christopher Leong, the architect who led the store designs, has said.
When New York announced the legalization of recreational cannabis in March 2021, entrepreneurs quickly worked to open for business. In New York City, this took the form of Uncle Budd and cartoon-wrapped Weed World trucks on street corners in the boroughs. They have slowly come online, but a year and a half after they first opened, the sales landscape has been underwhelming. There are only 132 licensed cannabis stores across New York State, around 60 of which are in New York City.
Critics have said that the state undermined the rollout, in which they cited unfulfilled social equity promises to deliver turnkey shops to license holders with marijuana convictions, as well as a failure to enforce the illicit markets. Business is competitive; some license holders turn to high design to stand out.
For Hankin-Biggers, her background in real estate development is partly why her brand has grown so quickly.
“Because of the 3,000 illicit shops, we really wanted to stand out in a meaningful way,” she’s stated. “There’s a lot of product out there, so why would you go to Travel Agency? We thought, why not make a dispensary fun and sexy and interesting. It’s not too stuffy—elevated but not elitist.”
What dispensaries can and cannot do
Because of state restrictions on cannabis retail and marketing, there are design constraints on dispensaries. Among them are that cannabis shops can’t be visible from the street, storefront signage can only say the shop’s name and state that it is a dispensary, it cannot have neon colors or bubble fonts, and all marijuana products must be locked from customers. Nothing can be sold that imitates food or candy, nor can dispensary names and concepts play on words that inspire thoughts of drug stores, apothecaries, doctor’s offices, or anything that would be appealing to someone under age 21.
As a result, Travel Agency’s spaces are thought of as experimental art installations. The sculptures in the foyers change periodically, solving the problem of having no cannabis products visible from the street.
Leong Leong designed cases that feel like jewelry store displays to meet lock-and-key rules while also making the products appear elegant. “All these security measures became design devices we embraced,” Leong says.
Hannah Frossard, a senior designer at Leong Leong, adds, “It’s almost more like a museum than a shoppable retail store.”
The advent of high-end stores
Gotham, a licensed retailer that opened in the East Village in May 2023, is another shop that went the conceptual route. Geraldine Hessler, vice president of marketing, describes the space as “accessible luxury.”
“We did not want a sterile space that felt transactional, so we created a space that invited people to linger, ask questions, and learn,” Geraldine Hessler says. “Customers often say they want to live in Gotham because they feel at home, and we could not ask for a better compliment.”
Because marijuana dispensaries are still relatively new, architects are attempting to appeal to as many customers as possible. However, high-concept spaces do not equal good customer experience. Aaron Ghitelman, a former deputy communications director for the New York State Office of Cannabis Management, visited one store but noted that the music from an event inside was so loud he left before buying anything.
“I want to be able to have conversations with budtenders and other customers,” he stated, “and I want to be able to get in and out.”
Of the spaces Ghitelman has visited, he notes Dagmar, a dispensary in SoHo with a goth Art Deco vibe, “went for it in a way that doesn’t take away from the cannabis purchasing experience.”
The dispensary he likes the most is Terp Bros, a small shop on Ditmars Avenue in Astoria with a plethora of products to choose from. “They figured out what a neighborhood dispensary, not a flagship, looks like,” Ghitelman stated.
In areas where recreational use has been legal for some time – such as California, Colorado, and Canada – there is a lot of ambitious retail. New York may be among them in a few years.
“It’s an exciting time, and I think folks are figuring out what works and what doesn’t, ” Ghitelman stated. “I think we will see more maturation—and hopefully not homogenization—of aesthetics.”
