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Massive greenhouse approved in Massachussets

Abja Roots

ABF(Always Be Flowering) - Founder
Veteran
By Dan Adams Globe Staff October 25, 2016

On the eve of a vote that could legalize recreational marijuana in Massachusetts, a Colorado company is preparing to build the state’s largest marijuana greenhouse, a sprawling, high-tech complex that could eventually expand to nearly 1 million square feet. Denver-based AmeriCann Inc. completed a deal last week to lease a 53-acre parcel for the project near Route 24 in Freetown, where officials have welcomed the company’s proposed Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center as a potential economic boon. The facility, to be built in phases over several years, is designed to bolster the state’s struggling medical marijuana program. But if voters here decide on Nov. 8 to legalize the sale of marijuana for recreational use by adults, AmeriCann expects to accelerate construction and would likely rent some of its cultivation space to a retailer of recreational cannabis.“Adult-use changes the timeline of the project,” AmeriCann chief executive Tim Keogh said. “It’s definitely part of the conversation with investors now, more so than it had been 12 or 24 months ago.”


The publicly traded company had announced a deal to buy the undeveloped land from Boston Beer Co. earlier this year but delayed finalizing the purchase several times. Last week, a separate investment firm formed by relatives of AmeriCann’s chief financial officer closed on the property for $4.47 million and leased it back to AmeriCann for 50 years, allowing the ambitious project to move forward. AmeriCann is raising funds for construction and hopes to break ground in about three months on the project’s first phase, a $20 million, 160,000-square-foot greenhouse the company said would more than double the state’s cannabis-growing capacity. Construction would last about nine months. “We’re very excited about getting this land developed, realizing the economic impact on the local area, and helping patients in Massachusetts,” Keogh said.

Eventually, AmeriCann hopes to expand the complex to three buildings, with room for offices, a quality-assurance laboratory, and a facility for manufacturing cannabis-infused food, lozenges, and tinctures. Citing security concerns, the company wouldn’t say how much marijuana could be produced and processed at the greenhouse, which will be closed to the public. The Freetown facility’s first tenant would be Coastal Compassion, a medical marijuana dispensary that has received a provisional license from the state and is building a storefront in Fairhaven with funding from AmeriCann; Keogh cofounded the dispensary in 2013 and serves on its board.

Keogh grew up in Marion and worked as a consultant in the marina business. He said he first got involved in medical marijuana after a close friend in Rhode Island undergoing chemotherapy began using it under that state’s medical program. Keogh joined AmeriCann in 2014 just as legal cannabis went on sale in Colorado and the movement had begun to spread to other states. But the company is relatively untested and tiny: AmeriCann has just two employees and a market cap of only $23 million. So far it has helped launch a small growing facility in Colorado and is working on similar deals in Delaware and Maryland. But several other projects have stalled or ended in a business dispute with the dispensary partner. Keogh said AmeriCann will try to raise the first $20 million by issuing convertible notes and courting private equity firms, private investors, and other small investment outfits.

AmeriCann’s complex will be in an area of wooded tracts and industrial parks, with few nearby residences. It’s less than a mile away from the massive warehouse Amazon recently opened on the Fall River border. Boston Beer Co. bought the land in 2007 for $6 million to build a brewery there but later canceled the project. Then in 2013, a year after medical marijuana was approved in Massachusetts, Freetown residents voted at Town Meeting to designate the property for use by a marijuana operation — a stark contrast to other municipalities that have tried to keep marijuana businesses out. “We wanted to get out in front of it, so we identified a parcel in an area of town that’s away from residences and would be suitable for this type of business,” explained Freetown Planning Board chairman Kevin Desmarais in an interview earlier this year.

Freetown officials said they were impressed with AmeriCann; selectmen voted unanimously to approve its site plans, and even the police chief has endorsed the complex’s security. “It was very professional. We approached it like any other project, like they were growing tomatoes,” Desmarais said. “Everybody understands now that this is legal in the state and there’s no coming back from that.” If Coastal Compassion expands its business as Keogh hopes, AmeriCann will add 400,000-plus square feet to the first building. Another dispensary or recreational grower could occupy the smaller “Building B” at a later stage. Under Massachusetts’ medical marijuana program, retail dispensaries must grow most of their own plants. So dispensaries leasing space inside the Cannabis Center would tend the plants, while AmeriCann acts as landlord and growing consultant. Such arrangements are increasingly common, as a new group of investment, real estate, and consulting companies seek to profit from the so-called green rush without actually selling marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

Advocates have repeatedly complained that Massachusetts has too few medical marijuana dispensaries and growing facilities and the legal marijuana available is too expensive — problems Keogh hopes the Freetown complex will help solve. The Freetown greenhouse, Keogh said, will be more efficient than other growing facilities, using solar panels, roof slats that open to let in sunlight, and other features to minimize utility costs. “Our utility consumption is 60 percent less than a typical indoor warehouse, which is a tremendous benefit in terms of driving down the cost of production and the carbon footprint of the cannabis industry,” Keogh said. The complex will also feature a computerized horticultural system to automatically control air temperature and light levels, plus a compartmentalized layout to help stop pests, blight, and unwanted pollination.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...ves-forward/s8hq0CMXsfciloay3Tif3K/story.html
 
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Abja Roots

ABF(Always Be Flowering) - Founder
Veteran
At the rate this is going all that will be left is people growing strictly for themselves and a few friends at best. The corporate cannabis takeover is in full effect, at least on the production side.
 

SocalNugz

Member
This just makes me sick.....
I wouldn't smoke 3/4 of what's on most dispo shelves. I imagine that will go up to 100% once no real growers are left only corporate growers.
People are so stupid for voting for this shit.
Dumb fucks selling out Thier friends and nieghbors and family so they can buy dirt weed over the counter.
I'm holding strains like crazy now too....
Next step will be to shut down genetics sources to all but "licensed" producers then the Hydro stores will be under scrutiny like the old days.... cops taking pics of who is using email following em... welcome back to 1985
 

FireIn.TheSky

Active member
It's like inviting a vampire in for dinner.

Just wait until the corporate MJ lobbyist pull the strings to abolish home growing and make you reliant on their subpar overly taxed commercial crap.

Luckily massachusetts doesn't really have the type of climate to grow high grade in a greenhouse all year long so hopefully it will flop and they'll lose their shirts.

I also love how the greedy fucks from CO are spreading their tentacles to every emerging legal state robbing the locals of an opportunity to prosper.

Fortunately I don't think the med program in MA has taken off like they thought it would. People in NE are cheap and it is suffering from a depressed economy. With legalization looming in MA there is a good chance med MJ will get steamrolled as it will extend the right to grow, trade and use MJ to everyone without having to buy the pricey card.

Early investors in the med program actually got robbed, such high prices to play the med game I'm talking millions in capital and thousands in fees. The fees to operate as a legal grower on scale will be much smaller, a literal fraction of what it cost to open a med dispo or grow center.
 
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bluntmassa

Member
Sweet!! That's pretty cool if you ask me I don't see what all the fuss is about. You want legalization this is what it will look like! Budweiser, Pabst, micro breweries (that taste better) and import which is my personal favorite beer. Plus we won't go to prison for a harmless plant.

I could sell my weed for $20 a gram all day but I choose to hook up friends for $20 per 3.5 y'all seem to just be worried about the money but money don't buy happiness. Growing weed without worrying about my family being torn apart and home taken away is all I want. But y'all just want prohibition prices to remain so you can make a living in a little 8x8 indoor garden greed is the root of all evil. You do not deserve more money than farmer John for your flowers you just don't you are not special anyone who can farm can grow dank buds. If you use Advanced Nutrients you are a fool IMVHO.
 

bluntmassa

Member
It's like inviting a vampire in for dinner.

Just wait until the corporate MJ lobbyist pull the strings to abolish home growing and make you reliant on their subpar overly taxed commercial crap.

Luckily massachusetts doesn't really have the type of climate to grow high grade in a greenhouse all year long so hopefully it will flop and they'll lose their shirts.

I also love how the greedy fucks from CO are spreading their tentacles to every emerging legal state robbing the locals of an opportunity to prosper.

Fortunately I don't think the med program in MA has taken off like they thought it would. People in NE are cheap and it is suffering from a depressed economy. With legalization looming in MA there is a good chance med MJ will get steamrolled as it will extend the right to grow, trade and use MJ to everyone without having to buy the pricey card.

Early investors in the med program actually got robbed, such high prices to play the med game I'm talking millions in capital and thousands in fees. The fees to operate as a legal grower on scale will be much smaller, a literal fraction of what it cost to open a med dispo or grow center.

I'm north of MA in the mountains and I can grow some damn good weed outdoors without a greenhouse. With a greenhouse I could grow Haze with heating of course probably will have a small greenhouse just for that reason. I'm only going to buy import hash come legalization.
 

FireIn.TheSky

Active member
I'm north of MA in the mountains and I can grow some damn good weed outdoors without a greenhouse. With a greenhouse I could grow Haze with heating of course probably will have a small greenhouse just for that reason. I'm only going to buy import hash come legalization.


Im sure you can grow great bud up thru October maybe novbe but I don't think you could keep pulling bud out of a greenhouse heated or not thru december, January, february etc...without supplimental lighting.

The sun is not strong enough thru the winter months and it's not like California where you can bank on clear, sunny days all year long. There is long duration of grey days with a real lack is sunlight. Thats all I was saying.

I kind of feel these large producers just take over the regs and beaters type of market. It may hurt cali exports. I don't think connoisseur quality is necessarily what they are after on such a large scale.
 

bluntmassa

Member
Im sure you can grow great bud up thru October maybe novbe but I don't think you could keep pulling bud out of a greenhouse heated or not thru december, January, february etc...without supplimental lighting.

The sun is not strong enough thru the winter months and it's not like California where you can bank on clear, sunny days all year long. There is long duration of grey days with a real lack is sunlight. Thats all I was saying.

I kind of feel these large producers just take over the regs and beaters type of market. It may hurt cali exports. I don't think connoisseur quality is necessarily what they are after on such a large scale.

You grow enough you can take the winter off no real reason to grow 12 months a year really the cost in heating and lighting it better be some premium shit because I do pretty good under the sun and have plenty of land. Prohibition is the only reason it's profitable to grow indoors. But the big guys will need greenhouses to prevent pollination meanwhile I will probably never have a problem with pollen.
 

VonBudí

ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ
Veteran
but I don't think you could keep pulling bud out of a greenhouse heated or not thru december, January, february etc...without supplimental lighting.

indeed,tweed use supplemental during the winter, 20 acre facility in cannada.

something i was wondering though, what if you didnt use lights during the winter(just heating), grew autos and then blasted everything, still $$$? id imagine with an arm long list of investors letting it sit isnt an option.
 

mowood3479

Active member
Veteran
Fuck Americann those corporate whores....
They get the permits cause they lined the politicians pockets with $$$.
Have fun smoking that Schwag
 

bluntmassa

Member
Fuck Americann those corporate whores....
They get the permits cause they lined the politicians pockets with $$$.
Have fun smoking that Schwag

Like Americans are incapable of growing dank?

I guess we don't have the coke like y'all how much does a kilo go for? I really been thinking about taking a boat ride down check out them temples and shit and bring back a few Keys figure worst case scenario I throw it overboard best was I'm damn near rich. :biggrin:
 
You do not have to smoke corporate cannabis. Most people do not smoke or smoke very little. The shwaggest of the shwag can get them extremely high. (The reason large scale grown mexican bud still exists)

However, if you enjoy quality cannabis, how is corporate cannabis going to change that. You'll either keep your current connections, continue growing for yourself , or find a producer that produces the quality you seek.

It's not one or the other. Everyone sees these issue so black and white when cannabis fills the whole spectrum of possiblitities.

Our ideals will only affect the market so much. In the end, the market will decide. If the massive beaster cycles that the black market sees is any proof, most smokers barely smoke, and for them "bud is bud." They don't require strong cannabis and most can't handle it when they do get it. Until cannabis is enjoyed by the mass public the same way alcohol is, then we should see large scale grows producing the highest quality, as there will be demand.
As it stands now, while there's a huge demand for cannabis, the demand is just for anything that is within the species, not high quality terpene rich buds. If there was, people wouldn't continue buying the cheapest weed they can find.
 
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Lester Beans

Frequent Flyer
Veteran
Looks like the most expensive hay farm I have ever heard of.

I would rather smoke the real hay in my field than the chemical grown god knows what sprayed with hay these numbnuts will be cranking out.

Maybe we can get med-man to run it for quality assurance....baaaaaaahahahahahabaa
 
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