Hashing it out in Redmond, where it's pot shop versus Brown Bear Car Wash

Logan Bowers and Jerina Pillert scouted many locations before landing a spot for their cannabis shop, Hashtag, in downtown Redmond. They had been looking for two years.

Pot shops must be at least 1,000 feet from schools and playgrounds, per Washington state law. While Redmond has lowered state buffers for parks, day cares, gaming arcades, and transit centers to 900 feet, almost all of Redmond is still off limits for a weed store.

“You can’t spit in Redmond without hitting a park or playground,” Bowers said.

Hashtag has two more months before it will open its new location, however. The weed store is now in a dispute over its current location – one that has spread online and frustrated the property's new owners, Brown Bear Car Wash.

The current retail space is at a car wash at the fork of Avondale Way and Avondale Road. The lease ends on Jan. 31. Hashtag is now pleading with Brown Bear to extend the lease for another two months.

Without this extension, the weed business says it would have to lay off 15 employees.

Christine Bryant, Hashtag’s marketing director, said Hashtag thought Hashtag and Brown Bear, two family-owned businesses, could work something out. They hoped Brown Bear might extend their sublease by 60 days – the time needed to have their new downtown Redmond location up and running.

But Brown Bear refused.

So Hashtag turned to its loyal customer base, and blasted Brown Bear’s number on Twitter, said Ryan Pauley, Brown Bear’s lawyer. Hashtag believes that Brown Bear may not like the stigma associated with marijuana.

“We received tons of voicemails,” Pauley said. “We haven't done anything wrong here. We’ve been completely transparent ... They want to paint us as someone evicting people, and that’s not what we do. That’s not our brand.”

Hashtag also took Brown Bear’s yellow-orange bear logo and altered it.

“They put that on their website and put a little tear on it, as if the bear is crying because of what we’re doing,” Pauley said. “As if we’re doing something that is just unfathomable.”

Pauley put it bluntly – Hashtag had made an agreement with the prior property owners Super Bright Car Wash to be out by Jan. 31. That arrangement has nothing to do with Brown Bear.

Brown Bear needs access to the space to conduct their full demolition on Feb. 4, he added.

“We’re not in the business of getting into arguments with people. We’re in the business of washing cars,” Pauley said.

The current squabble is not the first time Hashtag has run into conflicts on the property. Hashtag sued and settled a lawsuit with previous owners Super Bright Car Wash over parking use, signage and harassment. As part of a settlement, Super Bright agreed to pay Hashtag $65,000 and extend Hashtag’s lease to Jan. 31.

For Hashtag, Christine Bryant said, it’s about the employees who have a family-like relationship.

“We work shoulder-to-shoulder and support each other the best we can,” Bryant said. “I know every single person involved in this, which is part of what makes it just so awful.”

Hashtag was prepared to pay big money to stay longer.

“We are prepared to offer $20,000 a month in rent,” reads Hashtag’s letter to Brown Bear.

Then again, Bryant said, if Hashtag were a different type of business, they would have had more real estate available to them in the first place.