Wednesday, August 26, 2020 An open letter from Raj Dhanda, owner of 57 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA regarding the opening of Cookies Harvard Square To Whom it May Concern, As the owner of 57 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, I am writing to express my enthusiasm for the opportunity to provide space for an important commercial endeavor that will help to advance equity in our community. We take it as a point of pride that Cambridge is committed to diversity and equity, but how many of our local businesses are minority-owned? Not many. How many of our major commercial buildings are minority-owned? Not many at all. Over the years, I often have found myself alone, judged, or unwelcome as the only person of color or immigrant in many Cambridge business circles. Despite that, my family and I have renewed our efforts to join with key neighborhood and business groups in recent times, hoping that we can make meaningful contributions to their missions, even as we struggle together and individually with their acute lack of diversity. The truth is that I've never really felt included or welcome as a person of color in certain business circles in this city. At times, I feel my actions have been judged or perceived differently, because of who I am, and because of certain privileges that I have lacked along my journey as both an immigrant and as a property owner. However, when the proposed operator and occupants of the new dispensary reached out to me, I was inspired by and felt included by their approach, and their vision of bringing equity to an emerging industry. For one of the first times since I proudly became a commercial property owner in Harvard Square, I felt like my story of being an immigrant and person of color in a space that is so predominantly white, it mattered to them -- and was seen through a positive and inclusive lens. The biases and barriers they had faced were known to me. The closed doors they had navigated in this City were known to me. When I learned that so few licenses across the entire Commonwealth had been awarded to economic empowerment applicants, and that such a promising group had been denied space by other building owners, I knew there was an opportunity to give back to the community, to promote minority entrepreneurship, and to do something bigger than just filling another commercial space. Right now, the space in question is a vacant, former Staples. Through this endeavor, it will be replaced by a Black-operated and minority owned business in an emerging industry, a business that will be a great community partner and which is extremely committed to providing community benefits. They have invested heavily in technology to address queuing concerns and to provide notifications to customers when their orders are ready, among other steps to leverage best practices from other industries to mitigate crowds while still bringing commercial vibrancy to the Square for the benefit of all. They have industry leading security practices and a partner in the Cookies company and brand whose founding, mission, and practices are squarely aligned with equity. Working with local groups like the Green Soul Foundation, which was founded by Cambridge natives, Damond Hughes and Cookies are creating opportunities for minority entrepreneurs and operators on a level that is otherwise severely lacking in the Harvard Square retail environment, and in Cambridge, generally. Knowing that the new dispensary at the Crimson Galleria will be a minority owned and operated establishment is something we can all take pride in. In fact, I have always prided myself on providing opportunities to immigrant and minority business owners, including the kinds of opportunities I was often denied myself, including right here in Cambridge. Along with the general public, my opinion on the cannabis industry has evolved. I realize now that prior views I had on many aspects of the industry were misinformed. I realize that at times in my opposition to prior projects, my characterizations of the industry at-large were at times based on misconceptions. Ultimately, those concerns were rooted in my skepticism on prior dispensary proposals were based in part on information that indicated the permit applicant was allegedly planning to quickly flip the operations to a separate investor once the permit was obtained, and perhaps to allegedly never operate it themselves, which ultimately proved to be essentially true in February 2019. This made it hard to know who we as a community were dealing with, prompting my vigorous opposition to the project. The exact opposite is true with regard to the new dispensary seeking to operate at 57 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, also known as the Crimson Galleria. Damond Hughes is a Boston area native and a Brookline High School alumni. He is an experienced property manager of a retail liquor store that was started by his grandfather. He is a certified economic empowerment applicant who has been approved by the Cannabis Control Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is a graduate of our Commonwealth’s fine public higher education system through the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he earned a degree in Sociology. He has worked for both the Boston Public Schools and the Cambridge Public Schools and has dedicated significant efforts to strengthening youth and after school programs. His resume is strong and his commitment to our community is clear. I could not be more pleased to extend economic opportunity and space to an operator like Damond, to his business partners, and to his family. I hope the Cambridge business community, Cambridge planning board, Cambridge City Council, and the community at-large will join me in celebrating the opening of Cookies Harvard Square as a beacon of equity and of minority entrepreneurship and empowerment amidst the seemingly opposite tides within our society -- and amidst the growing inequities of our region and or our nation. Their plans to mitigate community concerns and to reinvigorate commercial activity in the neighborhood or thorough and convincing. Their commitment to community benefits and to diversity, inclusion, and equity is unparalleled among anything I have seen in the Square over recent decades. They have opened my mind with regard to the importance of this emerging industry being one that is centered on the principle of lifting up those that suffered the worst under prohibition policies, policies that many of us, myself included, now understand to have been wrong, discriminatory, and harmful to our society. Does this mean that every dispensary project should be rubber stamped? No, it does not. But it does mean that the time is now to support the minority entrepreneurs, operators, and business owners who are seeking to bring an equitable balance back not just to their industries, but also to the City of Cambridge itself. It is my hope that you will see the wisdom in moving forward with the approval and licensing process for Cookies Harvard Square. Sincerely, Raj Dhanda Crimson Galleria, 57 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA