The non-descript building has housed a dance club and an art gallery and studio. But sometime next year, the 3,500-square-foot ground floor of 411 New York Avenue NE may become the first place where the District’s medical marijuana is grown.

The space is the brainchild of Montgomery Blair Sibley, a controversial lawyer who formerly represented the D.C. Madam and has recently reinvented himself as something of a medical marijuana entrepreneur. In September, Sibley registered the Medicinal Marijuana Company of America, LLC in the District, found himself a willing cultivator and set off to find a 1,000-square-foot space that complied with the city’s restrictive regulations on where the city’s 10 cultivation centers and five dispensaries can be located. (So far, a few people have expressed interest in opening dispensaries, but the market for cultivation centers remains wide open.)

He didn’t find what he wanted, but did come across the larger space in an industrial area of Ward 5 that was far enough removed from schools and recreation centers to pass muster. (No dispensary or cultivation center can be in a residentially zoned area or within 300 feet of a school or recreation center.) But given that the space was roughly three times larger than what he wanted, Sibley didn’t start looking elsewhere — he decided that he’d split up the real estate amongst other cultivators, which is permitted under the rules.