Near Matt Secor Brazilian Jiujitsu, his mom; 2 partners plan ‘Tridentru’ cannabis

FIRST IN THE CHRONICLE • Chronicle Staff Writer Zander Frost reports: Cynthia Secor of South Glens Falls and sisters Khadijah and Asia Peek of the Albany area plan to open “Tridentru” cannabis dispensary in South Glens Falls near Matt Secor Brazilian Jiujitsu at the Glen Gate Shopping Center.

Cynthia Secor is Matt Secor’s mother. She and the Peek sisters connected because Khadijah trains with Matt and is a Brazilian Jiujitsu black belt. (Asia is a psychiatrist.)

Khadijah, an attorney and real estate broker, lives in Niskayuna, “and I’m always in South Glens Falls, because I’m always training up there. And I do plan on moving up there. I’ve just been a little slow about it.”

Khadijah previously worked for the New York State Senate on cannabis policy — and long aimed to open a dispensary.

“I had been talking to Matt about it for a long time, and he had put me in contact with his mom,” she said.

Cynthia is retired after working for 36 years for the New York State Office of People with Developmental Disabilities.  “I just wanted to build up something,” she says. “I’ve lived here all my life. So keep something for my kids, my grandkids.”

They began their application in 2021. Khadijah said they were just approved by the Office of Cannabis Management.

She said they had Planning Board approval for a different location but they’ll need it again. “But we’ve had good support from the mayor and the planning board,” she said. They’ll also still need final compliance okay from the state.

Their “ambitious” open date is December. “The realistic one falls within January, February,” Khadijah said.

She said her path to the cannabis business started in government.

In 2019, “I started at the New York State Senate, and I worked for the Chair of the Senate banks committee. He tasked me to be his subject matter expert on cannabis, because, at the time, he was trying to find a cannabis and banking solution….

“Through all that, I learned so much about the industry, and I met a lot of really cool people and got to travel a lot in my work that I saw that this was something that I wanted to do,” she said.

With so many dispensaries opening up The Chronicle asked, can they all survive?

“Realistically, I don’t know if all these dispensaries are going to be successful being so close to each other,” Khadijah said. “I think it’s going to come down to who has better branding and who has the better business acumen.”

“I don’t want to say I don’t agree with the OCM giving out all of these licenses,” she added. “But you also have to be strategic with it — because there’s a reason why Apple didn’t open up multiple locations, that there’s only one Apple store in Crossgates Mall where everyone has to go to if they have an issue — because they don’t want to be in competition with themselves.”

New York State Cannabis Law “establishes a goal to award 50% of all adult-use licenses to Social & Economic Equity (SEE) applicants” — applicants from the following: • Individual from a Community Disproportionately Impacted • Distressed farmer • Service-disabled veteran-owned business • Minority-owned businesses • Women-owned businesses.

“So you’re trying to build all of these equity applicants,” Khadijah said “but then you’re kind of pitting them against each other.”

What will be Tridentru’s edge?

“I think a lot of people get into cannabis because there’s a lot of money in it. And while that’s true, I know my partners and I look at businesses as a vehicle to make our communities better and to make everyone better around us.

“So our edge is going to be making sure we’re taking care of the community and taking care of our employees,.”

She said she hopes to “be able to start people at like, $20 an hour.”

The shop’s site is where Glens Falls Bagels and Little Caesar’s Pizza were at 131-135 Saratoga Ave.