touring facilities in colorado

I am making a trip to denver and would love to tour some facilities, especially those who breed. I can offer some fresh seed stock in exchange if interested. I will be traveling this weekend. Not looking for trade secrets just to network and see how you do it!
More power to you for being legal pioneers and can't wait to be in your land.

I'm thinking it may all be somewhat different than you are visualizing...

This info is a few months old...but I think you may get the drift about how all of this is playing out for the players who are playing, and how little they care about anything other than making huge bank and protecting their grow. In short, the sad truth is that the majority of people who are involved in this new industry are only in it for the $$$.

http://www.thecannabist.co/2014/08/...-tour-investing-strain-hunting-website/16664/

Keep all of it on the down low. It's "legal"...it just isn't legal to smoke in public/etc. Check with your hotel as well...as every property owner in CO has the right to allow or disallow use.

have a great trip.

Google "Colorado pot tourism packages" to see what's available.

They're making money off every aspect of cannabis, including letting you see it...

I was more hoping for some icmaggers to open up a bit... of course I agree most growers are in it for the $, but surely there are some passionate growers who see value in creating a community. The world is changing...
Thanks for the replies but do to illness I have canceled the trip. I will re schedule prob after the new year if any like minded operators care to start a conversation.

Well, writing us all off as greedy is one way to look at it, certainly.

All I can speak to is WA, so here goes...

There's a bunch of red tape involved in allowing outside access to facilities. Grow ops are by necessity not usually open to the general public. I'd need several days' notice to get the paperwork ready and let the LCB know to look over our shoulders while the tour is on.

Next, allowing outside eyes into grow ops is insanely risky to almost every legal grow op because none of them are fully compliant with relevant state and local law. I promise it. It's almost impossible to be and if they let in an outside person who complains to OSHA, for instance, then they could be out a ton of money for allowing that person to see the violations. It's not even big stuff like Metal Halides in open fixtures. Even little details like not labeling your fertilizers with color-coded, state issued hazmat stickers could catch you heat on inspections.

And, lastly, you're an outside person. You can bring bugs into my op and walk away clean, deliberately or not. I can turn every visitor to my op into a "bubble boy" but that's a huge hassle in and of itself and isolation suits cost money, too.

Then there's the time that either I or my employees have to spend walking through with you, and we're pretty short staffed. Most ops are.

Soooo... yeah. Rules on visits from the public were only finalized by the LCB two weeks ago if I remember correctly, and they're strict. It sucks to charge for it but we're out several hours of labor and have to take on a big risk with every person who walks through the doors. It's not just about money. If it was, a lot more grow ops would be giving them.

That being said, I intend to open my facility up to tours in the first half of 2015. If I do it and I charge for it it's still going to be a massive PITA that I consider a favor to the horticultural community and I promise you I'm not going to be making jack off it. You have to go through the same procedure as what's required to enter an area where they work with effing Ebola, but we're going to make it available. Best I can do.

As far as Denver goes, Lightshade on Holly has a window from the street into their grow op. You can look in and watch them work. Medicine Man out by the airport was also discussing doing tours when I went over to Denver 6 months ago and I was told has been filming a marijuana documentary, so they may have their QA and paperwork procedures for visits more smoothed out than other grow shops.

Also, don't expect to see a lot of legal rec growers wanting to teach their competition. Just saying...

sr stynkalot
thanks for the reply. I see your perspective and appreciate your insight. I doubt if I am going to see anything I haven't seen before on a tour but I value person to person relationships. I also want to share my knowledge. I want to start networking within the industry and find like minded people who have pride and integrity both with their cultivation side but also their business side.
I want to learn from the experience of others in a similar situation, but most importantly I want to share what I have learned. I also want to share genetics and techniques with other breeders.
Also I am not located in Colorado so I could I be viewed as competition?

Heck, I said I was going to give tours. I could care less. I think I can make a good product and be profitable too, and if I can convince people that they can make reasonable growing techniques profitable (i.e. proper flushing, curing, minimal pesticide use, etc) then I'm a happy clam. Come, learn, network, whatever. I'm heading to law school so I don't know that my contact will be worth much, but I'm happy to share what I've learned and would LOVE to learn from you.

That anti-competition vibe was what I got while from a couple places while I was in Denver though. Heck, I asked the same question you did when I went down there (also not competition, my WA driver's license kinda proves it) and I had one budtender ask me "So what's your angle? Are you looking for a job here or what?" and then shooed me out the door. I was mostly trying to warn you more than anything else, although my boss might feel differently. A lot of the people who had enough money to fund a grow op out of pocket aren't big ganja fans and were looking at the profit margins. Research where you want to hit before hand and assume a stereotypical potrepreneur wants to see you clean shaven and in a polo and dress slacks. Business casual would probably meet more of them on their level and get them to open up to you more.

Regarding breeders, that's CO only. I know nothing about that. I heard Red Eye was getting into I-502 up in my neck of the woods but don't know for sure and breeding is an ex-nay in this state. We didn't legalize home growing. More's the pity - might have kept our tax structure more honest if they'd allowed the "fuck it, I'll do it myself" competition. Gripe for a different thread though...

As far as integrity in business practices goes, we're literally under surveillance by the state 24 hours a day. Anyone you meet is going to have integrity or is going to be out of the business sooner or later. I've kept my ear to the ground locally and the LCB has been very, very attentive to issues that could attract federal attention. Cheating in business would be one of those. Everyone can cheat us but the gods forbid we forget to cross a "T." Pride in the process may be *a bit* harder to find. You WOULD NOT believe the costs involved in rec growing. The desire to squeeze your crops for everything they're worth isn't motivated by greed, it's motivated by the desire to stay in business. Development of this industry DID NOT go down as advertised.

Picarus said:

I am making a trip to denver and would love to tour some facilities, especially those who breed. I can offer some fresh seed stock in exchange if interested. I will be traveling this weekend. Not looking for trade secrets just to network and see how you do it!
More power to you for being legal pioneers and can't wait to be in your land.

Click to expand...

Picarus, who the fuck are you that you get a tour. Ed Rosenthaul, George VanPatten? CNN? Go show up at a nuclear facility and say you have some seeds to trade for a tour. I would never let you into my facility or a facility I work with. Go to Iran and ask for a tour of their nuke facility. I take my business as serious as the government takes their nuke facilities.

your the fucken greedy one offering seeds for a tour. Clearly you don't know the value or you do and want to exploit.

master, thats rough. You are on a whole different vantage point from this guy.

That is a trip how different you see things from Picarus. I hope soon cannabis breeders will be able to patent and protect their genetic work like other agribusiness genetics companies. Like Monsanto or DuPont or Pioneer HI-bred, or any other major agricultural genetics company. My father retired as a senior plant breeder at one of these and he'd really enjoy having students follow him, was passionate about his work... he didn't smoke or breed pot though... once Monanto employees stole some Pioneer genetics and the court battle went on for damn near a decade it seemed... but I digress... and they only produce homogenous F1 lines of seed corn for farmers... every plant, every row, is identical...but you could have limited access to visit their facilities if you asked the right people.

As this emerging industry legalizes and moves mainstream, it will be interesting to see how well different players position themselves and who remains relevant and competent to compete. Right now you have people winning by creating unstable polyhybrids and growing out a bunch, keeping the winner cut to compete with, and selling 10 pack seeds that often won't be like the winner cut... for the moment some pollen chuckers are able to make a dollar and walk tall on the forums before actual geneticists come in and establish homogenous f1 lines across the board of whatever people want, gmo's resulting in unforseen tastes, smells, smoothness, medical efficacy, etc... with gene splicing the opportunities are endless...

Seeing the denver commercial facilities would be a dream for many people vacationing to Colorado, if only because these people are living in places where they have to fear jail for even a small closet grow. I hope you come to appreciate those who take interest in your work as a plant breeder.

What cup winner did you breed?

The Master,
I can tell by your self gloss how you feel about yourself, but not every grower is capable of such ego. Colorado has led the charge into legalization and I am interested to see how people are getting along on the business side. What are the pitfalls, how are they auditing the growing, how are local gov't inspecting them etc. What are the challenges going from a medical non-profit into a for profit business?
I, unlike you, have a lot to learn from others and am more interested in community and effecting real change rather than profit.
I don't enter into competitions myself, but when my donation was entered in by a dispensary I work with, I won first prize. 2013 Sf medical cannabis cup. Take you accolades and go pound sand. Good luck with your 7 figure buyout. I'm sure you and your new boss will get along well.

Master - in case you were curious, our government offers tours of nuclear facilities. http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordSiteTours

I don't understand your paranoia. Do you think you have some special, million dollar trade secret to protect? If so I have no idea what it could be because successful warehouse ops do almost everything the same way. Same active canopy to nonproductive floorspace ratio, same HVAC equations, same wiring, same lighting configurations, slight variance in fertigation, etc. The limiting technology for indoor production was designed in the 70s and people have pretty well figured out how to use those lights in the last 40 years. Only reason I can see to hide from the public is if you're afraid you'll do something wrong and get reported for it.

I wish I had gotten a 6 figure guaranteed salary and a 7 figure buyout but I'm telling you flat out that's not going to happen in the rec market at the ground level. You work your ass off for someone else as a master grower for a small stake in the company that you expect to grow in value through YOUR hard efforts over several years. I think you and many others are pricing yourselves out of this market. The hand that writes the checks gets the cheese and if you're one heck of a "try-hard" you'll earn a fraction of what they make for your efforts, which could still come out to be a huge sum of money.

Even so, there are many, many people who can "produce" the same resume you can if one condition of said resume is that prospective employers may not actually investigate it. Has that occurred to you? An NDA completely defeats the point of a resume. That is why the common attitude is if you're qualified for this sort of position, prospective employers will contact you rather than you contacting them. It's assumed you've done some stuff you shouldn't talk about and if you are well published then they can find you without hearing about it. Whether you need an NDA or not is really irrelevant though; that you even thought of it leads to certain assumptions about your moral character and common sense.

Finally, please remember everything you say on the internet represents you and growers have long memories. You can be nice now or have people harass you for it later if you get where you're trying to go. My two cents. Take em or leave em.

Picarus - the Cannabist has a list of places in CO you can go visit. They take cash, not seeds, but a few of them were reasonably priced. And if you have questions about the industry from the business side in WA anyway, Marijuana Venture is a great new magazine marketed directly to I-502 growers. Legal issues involving concentrates, the latest and greatest in marijuana advertising firms, recommended space allocation by percentage for different parts of warehouse style grow ops, and a lot of other fun stuff that no one in their right minds would want to know. Finally hearing about a worthwhile pot magazine has been the best perk of the job.

In regards to how they track plants, they audit growing in CO with RFID tags and in WA with bar codes. I'm not as solid on CO's regulations past that. LCB inspectors come after about 2 months to test video storage capacity on the security systems and then are supposed to be coming on an annual basis afterward. I believe (CO) Marijuana Board inspectors started heading out on a regular basis at the 6 month mark, but they're so understaffed that there's really no reliable way of guessing when long term inspections will be.

OSHA doesn't inspect unless you request it, have an accident, or they receive a complaint. Ecology claims they'll do annual inspections if you are doing something weird that requires special licensing, but their track record isn't stellar in my area and I'm not counting on them showing back up, not that it would make any difference. Building and Planning is really only involved while you're getting built in and don't do follow up inspections often, the downside of that being that if they come back and you've changed something they'll put a stop work order on your door and those don't have the same protections for your crop that the LCB has for disciplinary license suspensions. AFAIK if you get a stop work order from Building and Planning you're required by law to let your crop die in their pots. I could be mistaken, but at the very least it would have the same effect as a severe disciplinary sanction from the LCB since B&P takes three days to figure out where they put their cup of coffee. I would not recommend modifying anything after they've gone, and I promise it's going to be REALLY tempting. I hear it's the same almost everywhere except in a few small areas where the whole B&P department is one or two people who either actually do care about their jobs enough to do them well or don't care about getting fired enough to look twice.

There are some others that I can't remember off the top of my head, but they're less involved. For instance, you have to tell the fire department in addition to whoever else if you make a change to any of your chemicals after you move in so they know not to spray water on an acid spill or whatever. Lots of small things like that that you only really learn by going through the process. But the big ones that can kill the business and won't just get you fined are the LCB, B&P, maybe L&I if something bad enough happens, and in our case Ecology. And, of course, the tax man, but every op has its own accountant. That's not something you leave up to the farmer.

The biggest problems in this industry are really the same as almost every other legal business but seem a bit more exaggerated to me. Training and managing employees is a miserable headache, supplemental capital is nowhere to be found and there's an ungodly amount of paperwork both at the start and once you get going that you'd damn well better stay on top of. The real industry specific problems have been land zoning and availability, and if you're outside of a city, water rights. Properly zoned land has at least tripled in price, and in most of CO and a few places in WA water rights are federally owned and the feds would stop us from using the CO2 in the air for our plants if they could. Oh, and we get almost no tax breaks, so our costs are WAY higher than any other legal business and WAY higher than medical. "Waaah waaah medical is legal and we're all above board" is the rallying cry of the medical market in my area until the IRS comes calling or someone sets themselves on fire or something. Then they just shut down and open up on the other side of the city with a different name on the paperwork six months later. It has been going on for over a decade. I know of one guy who's about to close down his third store.

Medical and recreational are entirely different animals in WA. I hear it's different in CO but how much I couldn't say.

Hope that helps and if you go tour some ops I'm sure we'd all really appreciate a follow up post to share your thoughts on the experience!

I guess the master is on that nuclear cannabiz

Sir,
You seem like minded and competent. I appreciate you candor and knowledge. Once I get the pm I will reach out to you further. Thank you for your response.

No problem! I like to talk and anyone and everyone on this site is free to PM me. Just trying to help out. I have taken a lot from here over the years.

The Master said:

Picarus, who the fuck are you that you get a tour. Ed Rosenthaul, George VanPatten? CNN? Go show up at a nuclear facility and say you have some seeds to trade for a tour. I would never let you into my facility or a facility I work with. Go to Iran and ask for a tour of their nuke facility. I take my business as serious as the government takes their nuke facilities.

your the fucken greedy one offering seeds for a tour. Clearly you don't know the value or you do and want to exploit.

Click to expand...

What a completely inappropriate response. I love ICmag and been coming here since 07 because of the community and the sharing vibe that has always been present here. This kind of attitude is unacceptable, take it to a different forum.

Sorry, I know this thread is a bit old, but I really really hate reading negative posts on ICmag, this is not the place for it and I had to express my 2 cents on it.

As far as tours, I'd imagine not many would be open to doing that, mainly because of bugs, and safety.

I do however have a pipe dream of starting a seed exchange club one day. We have them all over the city for Tomatoes and whatnot. Would be a great way to network with other folks that are into the hobby aspect of growing vs the $$ aspect.

The Master said:

Picarus, who the fuck are you that you get a tour. Ed Rosenthaul, George VanPatten? CNN? Go show up at a nuclear facility and say you have some seeds to trade for a tour. I would never let you into my facility or a facility I work with. Go to Iran and ask for a tour of their nuke facility. I take my business as serious as the government takes their nuke facilities.

your the fucken greedy one offering seeds for a tour. Clearly you don't know the value or you do and want to exploit.

Click to expand...

Wow

yeah I work in the industry and tours are few and far between, and certainly not anyone. I could give my friends a tour but honestly it is a service reserved for family visiting and investors...ok sometimes to show off. haha
I wish you luck in your endeavors.

peace

I toured a medicinal dispensaries warehouse facility in CO, one of their many. Helped that I knew an employee, it was very clean and professional. To the person that started this thread, don't be lazy. Try to network and be social and you will find what you are looking for. It's not as easy as trading seeds for easy open access.

Hey guys!
Glad to hear you are planning to visit colorful Colorado! You will love it here!!
I realize I’m a bit late to the thread, however I wanted to share a couple tips to anyone thinking about visiting…

There are now a few “Bud & Breakfast’s”, that will supply toking supplies and even pair the perfect strain with your meal, (google “Bud & Breakfast”), which is a great idea for someone flying in and needing help getting meds. Since there are only a couple hotels that are truly “friendly" and welcoming of cannabis tourists, so I suggest looking at Air B&B…It’s a great resource for people wanting to visit CO and there are a number of really nice listings that are welcoming to tokers, (keep an eye out for spots with a porch or backyard! Most people are cool with you toking outside, as long as they have a private backyard or porch if you are respectful and considerate…i.e.: try to be clean and respectful.) Most places post a smoking policy in the description: look for something like “smoking ok outside”. I saw lots of places that mentioned "smoking is ok outside", a few were even more specific, saying “no cigarettes, cannabis ok”, etc.

The last time I was in Denver (Oct.) my whole family came out and we stayed for a week in a beautiful historic home in LoDo, (I’m out in the boonies of western CO, so we usually get get a place when we go down to Denver); there was even a silicone cannabis leaf pot holder, (or bong coaster), in the kitchen, lol…a sure sign I had picked the right place!

Just keep an eye out for listings that say it’s ok to smoke outside/on a porch. If you are respectful, courteous and willing to jump through the one or two (minimal) hoops, and you will have a great time! (Just don’t forget, you can’t toke in public!!!) If you need any other tips or suggestions on where to stay, don’t hesitate to PM me- I’d be glad to help.

Welcome & enjoy!!!

Surely inviting people on growroom tours is a recipe for disaster, regarding spidermites, etc