Hii NYC opened its Bay Ridge flagship at 9206 Third Ave. on April 18, drawing lines out the door and marking the brand’s first move into South Brooklyn.

The grand opening pulled steady crowds from early morning, with a DJ posted outside and complimentary snow cones, popcorn and sandwiches from neighboring Charlie’s Sandwich Shop circulating through the line. Owner Peter Beznos spent much of the day behind the counter himself, filling orders while staff walked customers through a menu spanning cannabis flower, pre-rolls, oils and edibles. The new location runs approximately three times the size of the company’s original Williamsburg storefront, which opened just one year ago as that neighborhood’s first licensed cannabis dispensary.

The growth is fast.

For Beznos, who was born and raised in Brooklyn and has spent more than 30 years in cannabis advocacy, the work has always carried personal weight. He describes it as “a calling,” one he said was “driven by belief that prohibition was wrong, that cannabis had legitimate medical and recreational value, and that the people who benefited most from criminalization were never the people who were actually hurt by it.” That framing puts the Bay Ridge expansion in a different light than a typical retail rollout. Beznos isn’t talking about market share. He’s talking about a decades-long conviction that the legal industry should serve the communities that bore the worst costs of the drug war.

Hii NYC holds its license through the Office of Cannabis Management’s Community Access to Regulated Dispensaries program, known as CAURD. The pathway was designed specifically to give community-rooted businesses the standing to operate in New York’s regulated cannabis market, prioritizing owners with direct ties to the neighborhoods they serve.

Bay Ridge now has four licensed dispensaries. Hii NYC is the newest, and co-owner Martin Kamornik said the move south was intentional from the start. “We’re happy to be in the neighborhood, we’re here to enlighten and enrich the community,” Kamornik told Brooklyn Paper. “The neighborhood has been very inviting, very accommodating to us, and we look forward to years and years.”

The bigger footprint changes what the business can do. Size matters here.

The Williamsburg location never had room for programming beyond straight retail. The Third Ave. space does. Kamornik said the team can now look at hosting community events and educational sessions, something the original storefront’s limited square footage made impossible. “We’re able to hold a lot more inventory at this location,” he said. “We can now look into hosting community events and educating the locals, something that we were unable to do in the first location due to its limited size.” That kind of community-facing operation is increasingly common among CAURD licensees, who tend to position their shops as neighborhood anchors rather than transactional retail stops.

Kamornik also signaled a broader ambition around how Hii NYC talks about its products to customers. Cannabis, in his framing, isn’t a counterculture holdover. It’s a wellness category, and the shop intends to help Bay Ridge residents understand it that way as acceptance continues to grow across New York.

There’s a legitimate business case underneath all the community language. Brooklyn’s South Shore neighborhoods have been slower to see licensed dispensary openings than North Brooklyn, and Bay Ridge carries real foot traffic along Third Ave. The neighborhood’s mix of longtime residents, families and a growing younger demographic gives Hii NYC a broad potential customer base. The New York State cannabis licensing tracker shows the outer boroughs still significantly underserved compared to Manhattan, which means early movers in places like Bay Ridge are staking real ground.

The CAURD pathway has not been without controversy statewide. Legal challenges and court injunctions slowed rollouts in multiple regions over the past two years, leaving some licensees in limbo for months. Hii NYC got through that process and now operates two locations with apparent momentum, which puts it ahead of many peers who cleared the same licensing hurdle but haven’t reached a second storefront.

Beznos didn’t slow down on opening day. He worked the counter and greeted customers in a shop his company built to be more than a place to buy product. Whether Bay Ridge takes to that vision the way Williamsburg did will show up in the foot traffic numbers over the coming months, but the April 18 opening gave the neighborhood a loud, festive first impression of what Hii NYC is trying to build.