High Bridge Arms, the last gun store in San Francisco, officially shuttered its doors in October, 2015 following a long fight with city officials over regulations requiring that firearm sales be videotaped and ammunition sales be reported to police.
Now, according to a recent 7×7 report, an effort to turn the building into a medical marijuana dispensary has been filed with the city’s planning commission.
Pacific Heights resident Sean Killen founded the new dispensary, aptly named High Bridge, to be a nonprofit endeavor dedicated to enhancing its local community — a stark contrast from the location’s namesake. Killen plans to keep medicine prices low, and says he will be offering some product at no cost to his poorest patients.
High Bridge’s landlord, Mr. Takahashi, bought the building originally in 1988. Takahashi is “very happy, quite frankly, that a cannabis store is going in there,” Killen said. In fact, one clause in the dispensary’s lease draws particular attention to the building’s history: the new business “shall not use [the space] for the purposes of storing, manufacturing, or selling any explosives, flammables, or other inherently dangerous substance, chemical, thing or device.”
“We did find a lot of stray bullets in there during renovations,” joked Killen.