The Durꦗst family real-estate empire — which weeded out pot-loving killer Robert Durst from its ranks — is teaming up with a major hospital trade association in a bid to legal♐ly grow and dispense medical marijuana.
Durst, 72, has been locked in a New Orleans jail since his March 14 arrest, when FBI agents found a revolver and marijuana in his hotel room, his latest in a string of pot-fueled follies.
Durst also is facing extradition to California to face charges that he killed his longtime friend Susan Berman after she’d been contacted by the ﷽Westchester County🉐 DA, who was investigating the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s wife, Kathleen.
Durst had testified that he kept five pounds of high-grade marijuana in the freezer of his homeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ in Galveston, Texas, where his self-defense stance helped him beat a murder rap in the shooting death of a neighbor.
Now the empire — headed by estranged brother Douglas Durst — that ousted the one-time murder suspect wants a piece of th🔴e pot action.
It is joining with th𒅌e Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents nearly 250 hospitals and health-care facilities in the state, for the high purpose of growing and selling weed to medicall🦄y qualified customers.
The newly formed partnership would have the hospital group’s for-profit subsidiary handling the medical details as Douglas Durst deals with the 🦩logistics of manufacturing, production and distribution.
“We know what🎃 our expertise is,” said GNYHA Ventures president Lee Perlman. “We needed to find a partner that had the infrastructure and the capital to make this very special.”
It helped that the Durst O🎐rganization was familiar with growing things other than tall buildings.
The real-estate company also owns and operates McEnroe Organi🌊c Farm in Dutchess County, although a company spokesman, Jordan Barowitz, said marijuana would not be grown there if th🗹e company wins the bid.
“It was that agricultural experience that was the impetus of our interest in the applica🐷tion,༺” Barowitz said.
Also bidding is the Nort🐼h Shore LIJ medical syste💧m.
Industry watchers said the two hospit🐭al bids are signs that the medical-marijuana field is gaining respectability.
Winning bids are expected to be annꦑounced next month.