EAST GRAND FORKS — The city of East Grand Forks, Minnesota, has selected Red Iris LLC and Skol MN LLC for cannabis business registrations after a random drawing on Thursday, Aug. 21.

Red Iris, based out of California, was selected as the recipient of the downtown zoning location and Skol MN, based out of Oregon, was selected as the recipient of the location in the highway commercial zone.

The applicant holding the Skol MN LLC is listed as the owner and operator of Mellow Moods, a low-potency hemp and tobacco shop in East Grand Forks.

Two alternate businesses were drawn as well, one for each location, Boreal Elite LLC in the downtown zone and Green Meadow Orbit LLC in the highway commercial zone. Boreal Elite is also based out of Washington and Green Meadow Orbit is based out of Moorhead, Minnesota.

“We recognize their approval is still a preliminary registration approval contingent upon them being able to complete all of the requirements of state and local laws,” East Grand Forks City Administrator Reid Huttunen said.

These selected applicants will now be brought forward to the East Grand Forks City Council for approval. If one of the primary recipients is found not to meet local or state requirements or cannot get the business off the ground, the alternate will be chosen.

“As far as local compliance goes,” Huttunen said, “they had to provide to us a location as part of their application and we verified that our applicants were compliant with our buffer zone as far as proximity to schools and parks. There is still a long process with the state they need to get through.”

The original plan in East Grand Forks was to give out these business registrations on a first-come, first-served basis once a business received a full license, but opted for the drawing after a change in the Legislature allowed for cities to give out registrations after receiving preliminary approval from the Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management.

An updated city ordinance also limited the number of registrations that could be allotted to two. Polk County must allow three cannabis retail establishments, given its population of approximately 31,000 people.

“It is a little unique that the city limited the number of registrations in its ordinance. I don’t know if how many other cities did that. Moorhead, for example, did not put a limit on it so they did not need to do a random selection like this,” Huttunen said.

To create an equal playing field for the high number of applications expected, East Grand Forks decided to hold a random drawing.

There were a total of 149 applications submitted for the registrations. Seventy-five applied for the downtown zone and 74 applied for the highway zone. There were several applications that applied for both the downtown and highway zones.

Editor’s note: An early version of this story misstated the states that Red Iris LLC and Skol MN LLC are based out of. They are based in California and Oregon, respectively.