Just off a two-lane county road, in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, a dusty brick factory mirrors the decline and the hopes for revival of the village of Sidney.
For more than 50 years, the plant housed one of the nation’s largest makers of appointment books, diaries and desk calendars. The company put down roots just after the end of World War II, and workers there made a comfortable living in what were considered lifetime jobs. Sidney’s main park still bears the company’s name, Keith Clark.
The business changed hands about a decade ago, when it employed about 700 workers. But online scheduling made stationery an increasingly hard sell, and last year, the new owner, ACCO Brands, finally shuttered the factory.
Raymond Baker, a resident of Sidney for more than four decades and its mayor since 2023, said he was cautiously optimistic when he heard earlier this year that a new tenant was moving into the plant. He hoped new jobs would lead to the building of homes and businesses, and help generate sorely needed tax revenue.
The new tenant was Stiiizy, the nation’s largest recreational cannabis company. Its arrival in Sidney gave the struggling village of about 3,800 residents — many of whom are skeptical of cannabis legalization — a prominent place in the fast-growing industry in New York. With plans to hire as many as 400 workers, Stiiizy, based in Los Angeles, would have become the second-largest employer in Sidney.
But a state investigation has found that Stiiizy was among several companies that made and sold their own products under the licenses of another company, Omnium Health, on Long Island. That practice allowed some of the industry’s biggest brands to make products at Omnium’s facilities without the required licenses. In October, officials started the process to ban Omnium from New York.
Omnium has not commented on the case since earlier this year. It is scheduled to go before a judge in the cannabis agency’s internal court on December 9.
Stiiizy, which cut ties with Omnium earlier this year, has denied accusations of using illegal weed. It now makes products under its own licenses. And Tak Sato, the president of Stiiizy, has described the entanglement with the Omnium investigation as “an unfortunate situation.”
“As one of the largest companies in what is still an emerging industry with a complicated regulatory framework that differs state by state, we are committed to working closely with our regulators and our partners to follow all the rules and deliver safe, high-quality products to our customers across the country,” he recently said in a statement to The New York Times.
Investigators have not filed a formal complaint against Stiiizy, but they have left open the possibility that Stiiizy and other companies could face penalties, including ceasing operations.
“Nothing will preclude O.C.M. from filing new or additional charges going forward,” said Stephen Geskey, the executive deputy director of the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, who is overseeing the continuing investigation. Any action could affect Stiiizy’s operations in Sidney, where approximately 60 workers, including some who had been laid off from ACCO, have been making the company’s signature vapes and joints since May.
For now, Mr. Baker noted that the fortunes of the village remained tied to the cannabis company.
“We have no control over what happens to them,” said Mr. Baker, 63.
A Village in Recovery
In Sidney, a three-hour drive northwest of New York City, the ACCO factory stands as a 757,389-square-foot relic of what was once a vibrant industrial hub.
“Those manufacturing jobs, they were pretty coveted, pretty sought-after,” Tim Duerden, the director of the Delaware County Historical Association, said.
It is an unlikely home for a cannabis company. After New York legalized recreational weed sales in 2021, the village board voted 3 to 1 to pass a law banning retail dispensaries and on-site consumption lounges within its borders. Mr. Baker, who campaigned on lowering taxes and revitalizing Sidney, was among the nays, and said he had even looked for a way to block the ACCO factory from being repurposed to make cannabis products.
Now, Sidney officials are reconsidering the retail ban. Mr. Baker, who now says cannabis could become as popular as alcohol, said the village could use the tax revenue from sales. He said the nearby village of Unadilla had collected $60,000 from a single dispensary, Greens Greenery, and that there were plans to open another one in the neighboring village of Bainbridge.
“It’s right on both sides of our village and we’re getting nothing from it,” he said.
Empty storefronts line Sidney’s Main Street. The local Kmart is gone. A skating rink burned down. The lone movie theater closed.
People who work or live in the village expressed mixed feelings about the legalization of cannabis, but they said good-paying jobs were desperately needed to draw new residents and to stop the young, college-educated set from leaving.
While shopping at Price Chopper, the village’s only grocery store, Zachary Youngs, 26, said many of the jobs available in the area were low-wage roles, mostly in retail and fast food. Some of his friends had decamped to Binghamton or Oneonta, where they had more options, he said.
The village was devastated by two floods, in 2006 and 2011, after storms dumped as much as 14 inches of rain on the Susquehanna River Basin, causing damage that wiped out 162 homes in Sidney alone.
The cost of repairs — and the loss of property taxes from residents and businesses that moved away — left a $10 million hole in the village’s coffers.
On a pedestrian bridge in Keith Clark Park along River Street, plaques commemorate the heights of the flood waters. At her home across from the park, Lynn McCracken, 59, a former forklift operator, recalled how the flood in 2011 filled the basement up to the ceiling. Next door, two houses no longer stood, adding to a gap in the neighborhood that allows an unbroken view to the railroad tracks.
“We got away easy compared to our neighbors,” she said.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration withdrew a $5 million flood-relief grant the village needed to install underground drainage pipes.
Without the aid, the risk of future flooding would hurt Sidney’s efforts to attract new businesses, said John R. Nolon, an emeritus professor of environmental and property law at Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law. But if the state takes action against Stiiizy, officials could use any collected fines to replace the grant.
“This is a big deal for the economy of upstate New York,” he said. “And so you would put a question on the table: ‘How can we penalize the offending cannabis company while leaving in place economic stimulus?’”
A Big Move
Stiiizy officially began sales in New York in February, throwing a big party in Manhattan featuring a magician, a sword swallower and two rising rap stars. Within a month, it was among the top 10 best-selling brands in the state.
Sidney wasn’t Stiiizy’s first choice for a home base in New York. The company considered other locations before moving its operations to the Omnium facility on Long Island and then, finally, to the ACCO factory, which was large and ready to use.
Teresa Schunk, 59, who leads the Sidney Chamber of Commerce, said Stiiizy’s arrival had put Sidney “on the map” for a growing industry.
“You don’t see that often in small communities,” she said.
The company’s move from Long Island to Sidney was slowly taking shape in April when investigators from the Office of Cannabis Management showed up at Omnium’s facilities for a surprise audit.
According to the audit’s findings, it could not be proven that the items Omnium was producing for Stiiizy and several other companies had been made with cannabis from licensed growers and properly tested by a safety lab.
The facility had made about $17.3 million worth of Stiiizy products, about $2.8 million of which had been sold before regulators stepped in, according to Stiiizy’s records and sales data from Headset, an industry tracking firm. State officials ordered retailers to stop selling the products.
An Uncertain Future
By May, Stiiizy was pumping out its own vapes and joints from the facility in Sidney after having obtained proper licensing. When The Times visited this past June, a line of workers in lab coats and hairnets were making and packaging vapes on stainless steel tables in a sparse, white room.
Before the audit this spring, the company had long battled accusations of maintaining a foothold in the illicit market in New York and other states. Media investigations and lawsuits have also accused Stiiizy and its founders of inflating the strength of its products, selling cannabis across state lines, running unlicensed dispensaries and selling products tainted with dangerous pesticides.
In 2023, Jin Kang, the company’s production manager in New York, was ordered to pay a $450,000 fine for running an unlicensed dispensary in Los Angeles. It was one of two unlicensed shops at properties he owned with Tony Huang, one of Stiiizy’s co-founders, according to property records reviewed by The Times.
Mr. Kang did not respond to a phone call and text message seeking comment. Mr. Huang, through a former spokesman, said he was the landlord of those properties, but that he had no connection to the dispensaries and that he had settled his fines with the City of Los Angeles.
Stiiizy has denied any connection to illicit activity and distanced itself from Mr. Huang, who it said is no longer working for the company, though he remains an adviser to Stiiizy’s parent company, The Shryne Group. Asked about Mr. Kang’s role, Mr. Sato replied, “No comment.” He has previously said that Stiiizy was being targeted because of its success.
Mr. Baker, the mayor, has watched from a distance as the state’s investigation into Omnium has unfolded, ensnaring Stiiizy.
With two years left in his term, Mr. Baker has some thorny issues to grapple with. The village avoided a significant property tax increase this year, after raising rates 11 percent in 2024 and selling one of its properties.
But it still needs more people and more businesses to survive. Mr. Baker said he believes cannabis can be part of that effort, even though he’s no fan of the drug.
“There’s a place for it,” he said. “If a company is legitimate, it’s good for our tax base and it’s good for our village.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Ashley Southall writes about cannabis legalization in New York.
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