Harborside is the Oakland dispensary Steve and Andrew DeAngelo opened in 2006, and in 2026 it still runs four Bay Area stores in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and San Leandro. It grew from a nonprofit medical collective into the company that assembled StateHouse Holdings, rang in adult-use sales on day one in 2018, and now trades under a court-appointed receiver who is selling off its parent.
The DeAngelos' Oakland collective and Steep Hill
Harborside opened in 2006 as a nonprofit medical cannabis dispensary, and it says it received one of the first six medical cannabis licenses issued in the United States. Steve DeAngelo founded it with his brother Andrew. By 2013 the collective counted 128,000 registered patients across its Oakland and San Jose locations.
The shop built its reputation on standards that were rare at the time. Harborside says it was the first cannabis retailer in the country to demand rigorous testing of every product it sold, the first to offer CBD-rich cannabis, and an early host of education programs for seniors and veterans. The flagship's state retail license is still held by Patients Mutual Assistance Collective Corporation, a name that carries those collective roots into the licensed market.
When Harborside went looking for a lab, conventional labs would not touch cannabis. So in 2008 David Lampach and Addison DeMoura founded Steep Hill in Oakland in conjunction with DeAngelo, built to test product for the dispensary. Cannabis Now credits Steep Hill as the first consumer cannabis-testing lab in the nation, and the two companies worked out testing methods together as they grew.
Weed Wars and day one of adult use
Discovery Channel put the store on national television in December 2011 with Weed Wars, a four-part series following the DeAngelo brothers and the day-to-day running of the Oakland collective. The show later streamed on Netflix.
When California's adult-use market opened on January 1, 2018, hundreds of people lined up outside the Oakland store before its 6 a.m. start, and Steve DeAngelo rang up the store's first adult-use sale himself. Three years later he was gone: Harborside announced his departure as chairman emeritus effective December 31, 2020.
Four stores, four very different rooms
- Oakland: the flagship at 1840 Embarcadero, holding an active adult-use and medicinal retail license.
- San Jose: 1365 North 10th Street, a location dating to the collective era.
- San Leandro: opened in February 2020 at 1965 Marina Boulevard inside a 7,000-square-foot World War II-era warehouse, with 25-foot ceilings, more than 700 windows and a working greenhouse on the sales floor.
- San Francisco: a 1,690-square-foot shop at 768 Stanyan Street in the Haight, across from Golden Gate Park, opened in May 2022. It is a social equity dispensary run by Fgw Haight, Inc., in which Harborside bought a 50.1% stake in December 2020.
Delivery runs daily and reaches past the stores into Marin County towns such as Mill Valley, San Rafael and Sausalito, plus Redwood City. Harborside's paid membership pitches 40% off every purchase, and the shelves lean on house and sister brands: Harborside Farms flower, Fuzzies, Kingroll and Dime Bag. A Desert Hot Springs store, which Harborside billed in 2020 as home to Southern California's only cannabis drive-thru window, is no longer operating.
Harborside Farms in Salinas
Harborside grows its own flower on a 47-acre production campus in Salinas. It leased the property before buying it in June 2021 for $10.84 million. The campus holds 200,000 square feet of licensed cultivation, split between 155,000 square feet of flower canopy and 45,000 square feet of nursery space, and a 2021 upgrade added blackout curtains and supplemental LED lighting to one of its 45,000-square-foot greenhouses.
The farm feeds the stores directly. Harborside Farms flower accounted for 42% of Harborside's retail flower sales through the third quarter of 2020, and in November 2020 Harborside began selling clones at all of its stores.
Going public and building StateHouse
Harborside listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange in June 2019 through a reverse takeover of Lineage Grow, under the ticker HBOR, with Andrew Berman as president and CEO. By late 2020 Peter Bilodeau was running the company as interim CEO.
Then it went shopping. It bought Oakland infused pre-roll maker Sublime in July 2021 for $43.8 million, closed on retail chain Urbn Leaf in March 2022 and named former FAO Schwarz chief Ed Schmults CEO, and completed its purchase of Greenfield producer Loudpack in April 2022. The Loudpack deal brought Kingpen, Kingroll and Dime Bag in-house, and the company renamed itself StateHouse Holdings.
Who owns Harborside now
StateHouse defaulted on four loans from its largest lender, Pelorus Fund REIT, which asked a California court to appoint a receiver in late September 2024. The Canadian parent assigned itself into bankruptcy on October 10, 2024, and Kevin Singer of Receivership Specialists took control of the U.S. subsidiaries, Harborside included, effective October 11.
The receiver offered substantially all StateHouse assets at a court confirmation and overbid hearing on January 30, 2026, with a $165 million opening bid. The package covers the Harborside stores, the Urbn Leaf shops, Harborside Farms and Loudpack's Greenfield plant. By May 2026 the sale broker listed the deal as in escrow, and no buyer has been announced.
Meanwhile the registers kept ringing. In September 2026 all four Bay Area stores were open and taking online orders, and the Embarcadero flagship competes with downtown Oakland shops such as NUG at 1600 Broadway.
For adults 21 and over.