Gunbarrel development underway

Construction is underway on a new building which is designed to include three retail outlets, including a marijuana dispensary.

The property, located at 6325 Lookout Road near the intersection of Lookout Road and 63rd Street, is next to the Hampton Inn & Suites, and the Whistling Boar Provisions restaurant site. The property owner is 6325 Lookout, LLC, which was formed in 2020 by Margarita Tsalyuk of Greenwood Village, Colorado.

The LLC became delinquent in 2023 according to records of the Colorado Secretary of State.

Bill McDermid, one of the owners of the LLC which owns the Hampton Inn property as well as the restaurant site, indicated that the property at 6325 Lookout Road was being developed as a retail site with three units for lease. The City of Boulder confirmed that an application for a new recreational marijuana dispensary had been filed on March 20, 2020 for the site, and that no license has been issued because the property is still under construction.

When asked by phone to identify the applicant, the city staff refused to provide the information, claiming it was not public information because a license had not yet been issued. The city directed the Courier to file a request for information under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). In response to a CORA request by the Courier for the name, address, phone and email of the applicant and any application materials filed, the City responded that it would charge $41 per hour, or a total of $123.00 for three hours of work to retrieve the records, plus an additional $.25 per page for the 123 pages of materials.

The Courier withdrew its initial CORA request, and instead submitted a CORA request for the name of the applicant only. The City responded by email, "This request is for information, not records. The applicant is Yuma Way, LLC, dba Lookout Dispensary." There was no charge for the information.

Yuma Way, LLC, was formed in Colorado in 2015 by Kirill Merkulov, listing a Denver address on South Colorado Boulevard. McDermid said that Merkulov was his point of contact concerning the property, but Merkulov did not respond to a Courier email requesting more information.

Public records indicate that Yuma Way, LLC has opened other marijuana dispensaries in the Denver metro area, including Arvada, and that the license had been renewed without opposition. In 2017, the Seattle Times reported that Merkulov and Tsalyuk had applied to open a dispensary in a coffee shop in Denver, and that they had support from neighborhood residents.