Route 110 already has dispensaries. What it does not have is one where the walls are a working art gallery, the exhibits turn over every few months, and the paintings are for sale alongside everything else. That is the model The Artist Tree built its name on in Los Angeles, and the company has chosen 900 Broadhollow Road in Farmingdale as the place to bring it east: its first store in New York, and its first anywhere outside California.

A dispensary that hangs local artists on its walls

The Artist Tree opened its flagship in West Hollywood and grew into a small chain with stores in Beverly Hills, Koreatown, Fresno, Oxnard and a half dozen other California locations. The concept has stayed the same as it spread: each store doubles as a gallery for working artists, with original pieces displayed and sold on site and new exhibitions rotating in roughly every three months. The company has said the Farmingdale store will carry that focus over with art from local artists, which means Long Island painters and photographers getting wall space in a retail setting that sees steady foot traffic seven days a week.

The retail side is what you would expect of a licensed dispensary: flower, edibles, pre-rolls, vapes and concentrates, with in-store shopping and pickup.

The paper trail says this is real

Dispensary announcements deserve a skeptical read, because New York's cannabis rollout has been littered with stores that were announced and never opened. This one has its paperwork. The state Office of Cannabis Management license database shows an active adult-use retail dispensary license at 900 Broadhollow Road, issued in October 2024 to Empire Plant Services Holdings LLC, the entity behind the location. The license carries minority-owned and women-owned business designations, and the record currently lists the store as not yet operational, which matches where things stand: built, licensed and preparing to open.

The company's own site lists the Farmingdale store as coming soon and is collecting sign-ups for a grand opening event. Its announcements point to doors opening this month, with the formal grand opening to follow in early September. As of this week the company had not published an exact date, so treat the timing as close rather than fixed.

Why Broadhollow Road

The address is no accident. The Route 110 corridor has become the spine of Long Island's legal cannabis market, with several of the region's busiest licensed dispensaries operating along the same stretch. State registration records show another licensed shop, Strain Stars, about a mile up the same road at 1815 Broadhollow, and the cluster has only thickened since the first stores opened. Long Islanders have proven to be among the state's most enthusiastic legal customers, and because large parts of Nassau County opted out of retail sales, the corridor catches shoppers from both counties. A West Hollywood brand betting its East Coast debut on Broadhollow Road is a bet that the Island's market has matured enough to support something more ambitious than a counter and a menu board.

It also puts the store minutes from Farmingdale Village's Main Street, Republic Airport and the Adventureland stretch of Route 110, on one of the busiest commercial corridors Long Island has.

What it means if you never touch cannabis

The gallery is the interesting part of this story even for readers who will never buy a pre-roll. Long Island has plenty of working artists and comparatively few commercial walls that hang them, rotate them and sell them. A retail space committing to local exhibitions that change every season is a real venue, whatever else the building sells.

When the doors open, the practical takeaways are simple. If you are a cannabis customer, the corridor is getting a new option with a different feel from anything currently on it. If you are an artist, there is about to be a new set of walls in Farmingdale looking for Long Island work to hang on them. And if you are neither, the corridor you drive every week is about to contain a rotating exhibition of Long Island art, which was not true yesterday.