NEW YORK (MainStreet) — With its four provisional licenses to cultivate and sell marijuana in Nevada, Grove Wellness plans to cut the ribbon on its first dispensary in Nye County by May of this year with a second dispensary set to open in Clark County in July.

“It has very close proximity to the Las Vegas Strip and is across the street from University of Las Vegas, but there will be no deliveries to casinos,” said Trent Woloveck, chief operating officer with American Cannabis Company (ACC), a consulting firm assisting with the opening. “The Grove Wellness will pick up patients and bring them to the dispensary.”

More than 520 applications were received by the State of Nevada and 70% were in Clark County, which granted special use permits to 18 medical marijuana dispensary applicants. 

According to Clark County Spokesman Dan Kulin, the state provided a provisional certificate to ten dispensary applicants; of those, only eight, including Grove Wellness, have applied for a county business license.

“A dispensary will not be given a business license, which they will need to open until all of the background checks are completed and their facility passes final inspections,” Kulin told MainStreet.

Inspections include evaluations by the building and fire departments.

“I am not aware of any facility being ready for final inspections and I cannot speculate on when that might happen,” Kulin said.

Another company that received provisional licensing is Medifarm, which is reportedly associated with Terra Tech.

“Medifarm received special use permits or land use approvals for a cultivation facility and a production facility; however, Medifarm did not receive approval for a dispensary,” said Kulin.

The process has reportedly been dogged by legal filings from different group applicants in the past three to four months.

One of the lawsuits was filed by a group of businesses that received county approval and not state approval; another group of applicants that filed a suit were denied by the local government but given preliminary approval by the state.

"Our client has obtained both state and local approval," Woloveck said of Grove Wellness, which is currently building a 46,000 square foot cultivation facility and a 5,000 square foot refining facility. 

Nearly 100 grow facilities have been approved; however, the state limited the number of dispensaries.

“Grove Wellness is building the only dispensary that was given a provisional license in Pahrump, which is about an hour from Las Vegas,” said Leslie Bocskor, founder of Electrum Partners, a marijuana related hedge fund. “With Nevada having qualified an initiative to be on the ballot in 2016, these facilities will likely be very profitable in the near future.”

Nevada’s Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske granted a ballot initiative that would allow residents to vote to legalize recreational use in 2016. In the meantime, there are still regulatory concerns that need to be met by Grove’s facility design.

“Those requirements include security, product transportation, seed-to-sale tracking, food safety and product efficacy,” Woloveck told MainStreet.

ACC is a public-traded cannabis company that is positioned to capture $2.2 billion dollars from the cannabis market -- propelled in part by growth in Nevada.

"After successfully guiding our clients in obtaining licenses, we are continuing our stewardship by assisting them in building and operating world-class businesses,” said Corey Hollister, ACC's CEO.

—Written by Juliette Fairley for MainStreet