An artistic rendering of the planned Smokey River Enjoyment District. // Courtesy of BesaMe Wellness/Joey Pintozzi
President of Besa Hospitality Group, Joey Pintozzi, and Vice President Bobby Lessany alongside with CEO Jack Mitchell are creating a multifaceted leisure venue along the scenic Missouri River known as the Smokey River Leisure District. Improvement is underway on the new house, which will showcase audio, artwork, delicacies, and much more at its functions. The location is positioned off 291 Highway in River Bend, MO, just east of downtown Kansas Metropolis.
The Smokey River Entertainment District will attribute an outside amphitheater, 2 indoor golf equipment & music halls for eating and consuming, and specified hashish use lounges.
Operator Joey Pintozzi is from the Kansas Town area at first, and he is the former proprietor of KC venue The Static Bar. He then spent more than 15 many years operating, marketing and endorsing bars and nightclubs in Las Vegas’s nightlife scene in advance of doing work at Hard Rock Worldwide in Southern Florida. Soon after the pandemic, Pintozzi uncovered himself returning to his Kansas Town roots, and joining BesaMe Wellness cannabis retail crew prior to helping launch BHG (Besa Hospitality Group).
Besa Hospitality Group’s mission, in accordance to Pintozzi, is “normalizing cannabis by way of hospitality.” He partnered up with Lessany, who has a record of taking care of and functioning nightlife venues in Dubai, Houston, and Las Vegas, and they introduced their eyesight to life.
“Cannabis will be part of the encounter,” Pintozzi suggests.
When Besa Hospitality Team founder and CEO Jack Mitchell saw the offered space in River Bend, he had the strategy to broaden Besa Hospitality Group with the Smokey River Amusement District. The space struck him as an chance not only to present a wanted new location for leisure and arts in Kansas Metropolis but also to further BHG’s mission of normalizing hashish now that recreational hashish has been legalized in Missouri.
“Just like alcoholic beverages and tobacco, you are heading to have selected locations where by you can lawfully consume and be yourself, exactly where you can have that normalization,” Pintozzi claims of the new location place. “It’s not just an entertainment district that has lawful cannabis. If you really do not want to be all over it, you really don’t have to be all around it. There will be amusement for all to enjoy”.
The Smokey River Enjoyment District is kicking off with the Smokey River 420 Festival on—you guessed it—April 20. This will be the first competition in the point out of Missouri that pays homage to legal cannabis, in accordance to Pintozzi.
“We’re going to generate a large live performance and have about a 10,000-individual capability,” Pintozzi says. “And to the side of the amphitheater, we’re generating a vendor village that will attribute hashish and cannabis manufacturers.”
The Smokey River 420 Pageant will also attribute food stuff and beverage distributors. Pintozzi states he’s in talks with countrywide tunes acts for the festival’s all-day concert.
Other occasions in the works include things like a Fourth of July competition honoring veterans and an conclude-of-summer months pageant, with the day to be decided.
“You can convey the family members out if you want. They don’t have to be around cannabis. But these who want to consume, will have the independence to do so,” Pintozzi states. “We’re going to have a really safe and sound, dependable area that capabilities all these choices for men and women.”
By 2024, the Smokey River Amusement District strategies to put into action an indoor music corridor as well, and frequent Riverwalk activities that includes food stuff and beverage concepts, out of doors artwork walks and new music occasions, and lodging for the household this kind of as a skate park and playground and, most likely, an Esports lounge.
Pintozzi phone calls the Smokey River Entertainment District “progress not just for us, but for the nation as effectively. We want it to be responsible and safe as we rejoice the end of prohibition.”
