Cannabis-friendly event space The Church on Delmar opens in the Loop

Ever since BeLeaf Medical’s SWADE Cannabis opened its Delmar dispensary in a former church in 2021, co-founders Kevin Riggs and Mitch Meyers have wanted to find a way to utilize the sprawling upstairs space in a cannabis-friendly fashion. Now, under the leadership of Joey Pintozzi, that space has transformed into The Church on Delmar (6166 Delmar), a customizable event venue meant to be an inclusive, community gathering place for creators, artists, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to host a get-together. On the heels of its first event—a cannabis-friendly poetry slam featuring Murphy Lee and Kyjuan on January 30—Pintozzi shares the inspiration for The Church and what he hopes it will mean to the St. Louis cannabis community and beyond.

SWADE first opened its Delmar dispensary in 2021. Has an event space always been a part of the plan? When they put the dispensary in what was an old church building, it came with this upstairs that was a beautiful empty space. Apparently, the church used to hold service up there for about 300 people every Sunday when it was in operation, but when we got the building and turned it into a dispensary, that room sat empty. Kevin [Riggs] is a music and entertainment guy, and Mitch [Meyers] is all about education, presentations, and lectures, so they knew they wanted to do something with it, but it never came to fruition. It was always an afterthought to getting the dispensaries open, because doing that takes a lot of head space. I wound up coming here to interview with Kevin and Mitch, and they took me to the Delmar location. We went upstairs, and I immediately saw their eyes light up when they explained to me what they wanted to do. They told me that they were at a point where someone needed to do something with it, and I  understood their vision.

This isn’t your first time working in the cannabis-friendly event space. What is your background? My career had been in the entertainment, hospitality, and marketing space, and when I got into cannabis, I was a retailer in the Kansas City area. I did the state’s first 420 Festival with Wiz Khalifa where we were able to legally have cannabis alongside alcohol in a public setting. Ten thousand people attended; we got different municipalities, and even members of the mayor’s office came out. We did it right. When BeLeaf found out I was leaving my job there, they reached out to me because I was a respected operator to them.

What is the vision for The Church on Delmar? It really comes down to three things. We want this to be a place of gathering for the community and a place where creatives and curators can watch their visions come to life. We also want it to be an extension of local businesses, and our goal is to give local business owners an outlet to create more revenue streams. And finally, we want to be a part of the Delmar Loop and be a part of helping it come back. There’s so much history here, and we’re just really excited to be a part of that. I’ve spent a lot of time getting to understand the neighborhood, both the good and the bad. The good is that it is an historic, beautiful arts-filled, musical place that exists with its own character. But that area, and surrounding areas, have fallen upon hardships and challenges, including the recent tornado. That’s why we came up with the name The Church—not from a religious perspective but from a community-building, place of gathering perspective. 

What kind of events can people expect at The Church, and what is the space like? It’s a big, beautiful open room. There are some subtle nods to St. Louis and Sinse [BeLeaf’s cannabis brand], but really it’s an open space where event planners can retrofit all of their ideas to the room. I’m a big creative guy and love marketing and creating experiences, so I like rooms that allow creatives and visionaries to gather and retrofit the space so that for the duration of their event, everybody is submerged in their vision.

You’ve made a point of working hand-in-hand with neighboring businesses. How you are supporting them? It was really important to us to support our neighborhood businesses, and as we talked to them, we realized that we wanted this to be an extension of their businesses—we told ourselves, “Let’s make their business our business.” In that sense, we don’t sell any food or beverages ourselves. If people want food and beverage at their event, we do it third-party style, so they can get it from anywhere. Of course, our preference is for it to come from one of the businesses in the neighborhood, but we do not have exclusive arrangements, so people can bring in food and beverages from wherever they want. We are a blank canvas.

Something that’s important for people to know is that this is a private venue, so we can have cannabis there, but it’s also OK if you don’t want cannabis. The idea is that we focus on the space first, then see what’s in your head and see how we can bring that forth within these walls. It’s a cannabis-friendly venue, but we don’t sell any cannabis there; if people want to stop in our dispensary downstairs, they are welcome to do so, but they don’t have to; we are a totally separate business from SWADE. And as for events, we’ve had inquiries for everything from vision board sessions and yoga classes to infused dinners, cannabis weddings, school reunions, and corporate trainings. We’ve been trying to piece it all together and work through some things. We’ve taken the approach of how I’ve opened restaurants and done events in the past, which is slow and steady. There’s an old saying in the events business: Your first one is your worst one. From there, you learn and get better. You’re always better from that day moving forward.

Cannabis weddings? That sounds like a good time. We have been getting so many emails about them. People are really excited and ask us, “Wait, you mean I can have my wedding and smoke cannabis there? Yes, absolutely. How they set it up is entirely up to them. We only charge a room rental, and everything else is third-party. If they want cannabis, they can go to our teammates down at SWADE, who will curate and build a beautiful menu with a consumption minimum, similar to how there would be a food and beverage minimum at other events spaces. But we’ve also had inquiries about educational events, art openings, vision boards meetups, spoken word gatherings, sound baths, and comedy festivals. Weedmaps wants to come in and do a big budtender event. We’ve also had many local restaurants contacting us about infused dinners, and on top of that, we have people wanting to do corporate events, student reunion parties, and Destination Management Company wanting to do something here, because they think the space is so beautiful and unique. Basically, you tell us what you want, and we help you make that happen. My whole life has been in entertainment and hospitality. In the cannabis space, my goal is to merge normalization and hospitality. They go hand in hand.