Months after a high-profile opening, Little Beach Harvest, the cannabis dispensary owned by the Shinnecock Indian Nation, is facing mounting calls from contractors who built the facility on Montauk Highway to pay past-due construction bills.
Payment letters and interviews with contractors indicate local electricians, builders and other construction trades may be owed more than $1 million, and attempts to recoup it thus far have proven fruitless.
Officials of Little Beach Harvest, a tribally owned entity, declined comment. Brian Polite, the outgoing chairman of the tribe’s council of trustees, described the situation as a business contract dispute similar to those experienced by other companies. He declined to elaborate.
The facility opened in November after eight years of development.
One of the problems appears to be a succession of investors in Little Beach Harvest that have provided levels of funding or management, only to eventually divest their interests. As reported in Newsday, one of the original investors, TILT Holdings, experienced financial problems of its own and passed the investment on to Power Fund Holdings, just as the facility was about to open last fall.
Calls to Power Fund Holdings and another tribal management firm, Conor Green, were not returned, and it’s unclear the level of participation either has in the tribe’s nascent cannabis
