LEWISTON — In a single door of the nondescript Westminster Road constructing, workers enter and bathe earlier than donning scrubs and hairnets.
There’s a again hallway of high-tech heating, ventilating and air-con items, and dozens {of electrical} conduits spanning the ceiling, woven collectively like unlikely artistic endeavors, with 137 safety cameras watching all of it.
“Each side of this room has been engineered for optimum efficiency,” Joel Pepin stated whereas giving a tour of JAR Hashish Co.’s new 35,000-square-foot cultivation operation and firm headquarters.
They’ve invested greater than $3 million and it exhibits.
Quickly, 40 folks will work there day-after-day. It’s the town’s single-largest marijuana venture of 2021 — next-largest is a $1 million storefront construct the place McDonald’s used to take a seat on Lisbon Road.
Throughout the Androscoggin River in Auburn, 30-something undeveloped acres off Minot Avenue assessed by the town at $199,200 4 years in the past shot as much as $4.8 million in worth in 2021, all courtesy of hashish grows popping up there.
Within the Twin Cities, it was positively a rising yr.
For a snapshot of the panorama: Auburn has not less than 46 adult-use leisure and medical marijuana operations, from cultivation websites to storefronts, and one other 29 functions pending, in response to metropolis corridor information.
In adult-use operations alone, the town has the third-highest variety of energetic, conditional and pending licenses within the state at 34, behind solely Kittery and Portland, as of Nov. 30, in response to the Maine Workplace of Marijuana Coverage.
In Lewiston, Director of Planning and Code Enforcement David Hediger has misplaced depend of the variety of occasions he’s stated no — No, you possibly can’t find there. Or there. Or there. — after that metropolis opted for a extra purposely spaced-out strategy to allowing marijuana operations.
Lewiston has 19 adult-use operations, tied for fourth-most within the state with South Portland.
“I feel it’s a query of when does the market turn into saturated, which apparently, we’re not there but,” Hediger quipped.
With two outlets in Lewiston, Alex McMahan, a founding associate and working supervisor at MEDCo, sees extra of the identical for 2022 with combined outcomes and doubtlessly impolite awakenings.
“Simply previously month, I’ve had everybody from one in every of our plumbers to one in every of our meals distributors to a few different random folks say, ‘Hey, I’ve obtained some land, I’ve obtained some cash, so I’m fascinated about beginning up a develop. What recommendation would you give me?’” he stated. “A few of the people who simply threw up a develop of their yard as a result of they thought they may make a bunch of cash, they could notice this isn’t really well worth the headache.”
‘VERY INVITING’
The 2 cities noticed practically $10 million in marijuana-related development in 2021 by way of the top of November, in response to allow information.
In Auburn, it was $5.5 million, in Lewiston, $4.3 million, a mixture of renovations, new builds and conversions, like a pool provide warehouse-turned-grow-operation on Middle Road.
It may be difficult to measure the direct affect to the cities’ backside strains: the state collects gross sales tax, not the locals, and investment-intensive operations usually qualify for Maine’s Enterprise Tools Tax Exemption program.
“Elizabeth Ann’s was a comfort retailer, now it’s a marijuana retailer — from a constructing valuation (perspective), there hasn’t been a major improve,” Hediger stated. “Total the affect has been minimal to the town.”
Alternatively, the Mystique Means Hashish Park off Minot Avenue in Auburn is one putting instance of what development can imply.
A March 2020 photograph exhibits among the first greenhouses constructed within the Mystique Means Hashish Park in Auburn. The 38-acre lot was assessed at just below $200,000 in 2017. The assessed worth of the land and buildings there in 2021 is $4.8 million, in response to metropolis information. Russ Dillingham/Solar Journal file photograph
The 38-acre lot was assessed at just below $200,000 in 2017 earlier than a couple of acres had been break up off to an abutter.
With the addition of develop operation after develop operation, the assessed worth of the land and buildings there elevated from $2.7 million in 2020 to $4.8 million in 2021, in response to metropolis information.
The distinction to the town: Roughly $4,700 in property taxes in 2017 versus roughly $115,000, plus private property taxes, in 2021, in response to Eric Cousens, Auburn’s director of planning and allowing.
“Marijuana companies are contributing vital tax {dollars} to pay for metropolis companies, and as we approached the restrict of no more than 20-25 shops, (we) adjusted our setbacks between companies from 1,000 toes to 2,000 toes,” he stated.
That’s meant to restrict extra growth in all places however within the metropolis’s industrial zone.
“Auburn has and can all the time be supportive of recent, cutting-edge trade and we are going to proceed to welcome good enterprise people who wish to contribute to our metropolis whereas making certain that we preserve stability inside our neighborhoods and be sure that one trade doesn’t crowd out others,” Mayor Jason Levesque stated.
Lewiston native Steve Peters opened a marijuana tissue tradition lab on First Flight Drive in Auburn in February 2021 with two enterprise companions. Vertikal Tech’s lab now homes practically 100 totally different strains. Crops from the positioning will provide TheJoint.me, the trio’s new music-themed medical marijuana retailer opening in Portland quickly, not removed from Rock Row. Job candidates had been inspired to play an instrument.
“Everyone knows the city of Auburn may be very inviting to the hashish trade,” Peters stated. “Most significantly, I used to be in a position to safe a constructing over right here with some folks I grew up with that was a really well-kept constructing, that had the facility we wanted.”
In Lewiston, Hediger counted 11 energetic cultivation licenses, 4 manufacturing amenities and 14 shops as of November, with six shops and one manufacturing website pending, all a mixture of medical and grownup use. He stated the town’s two-year-old marijuana laws, which require distance buffers from locations akin to day cares and public parks, have turned again extra growth.
“There isn’t per week that we don’t get an inquiry. Some weeks we get a number of inquiries,” he stated. “We should always have been conserving observe of what number of occasions we are saying no — we are saying no quite a bit.”
Those self same guidelines additionally restrict the variety of shops inside 500 toes of one another to only two.
“That was a query at one time: ‘Is downtown Lisbon Road going to turn into this marijuana row?’ For higher or worse, it hasn’t. A part of it’s due to the setback requirements,” Hediger stated. “Dufresne Plaza downtown — you’ve obtained an enormous buffer proper there of 750 toes.”
Matt Taggart stated it was conversations with Lewiston’s planning division that “completely made my thoughts up” about constructing his first grownup use retail retailer at 1240 Lisbon St., the previous dwelling of McDonald’s.
Taggart, president of Emerald River Maine, is tentatively hoping to open on the finish of January with six workers.
He stated he’s additionally reached out to a Lewiston nonprofit hoping to sponsor a charity stroll/run occasion in 2022.
“Lewiston, for my part, has accomplished an unimaginable job organising the zoning and the ordinances for these shops,” Taggart stated. “Actuality is actuality, different areas are going to be oversaturated, and that’s less than me to fret in regards to the laws on that. I choose correctly and I am going the place I’m.”
The tax distinction to the town: A $2,430 property tax invoice on the 1240 Lisbon St. lot pre-build versus an estimated roughly $22,600 invoice post-build between actual property and private property taxes on Taggart’s venture, in response to the assessor’s workplace.
‘HOW CAN WE DO THAT AGAIN?’
Construction got underway in January for JAR Cannabis, gutting a former L.L.Bean facility on the 75 Westminster St. location to put in rooms for every step of cultivation and processing, together with totally different entrances for various groups of staff.
They harvested their first crop in early December.
Automated controls oversee mild depth, fan speeds, temperatures, humidity and feeding schedules for flowering rooms of roughly 1,400 vegetation, every with a blue, traceable tag protruding of the soil in its pot.
“What we’ve accomplished on this facility, is, as we scale, we’re looking for efficiencies, however we’re additionally making an attempt to have flexibility,” stated Pepin, 35. “A few of the strains eat at totally different occasions, so we wish to attempt to automate as a lot as we will, however we additionally as growers need to have the ability to have the power to provide every pressure precisely what it needs.”
One key to all the controls is making issues repeatable, he stated.
“We are able to look again and if we now have a very nice crop, we now have the power to have a look at, ‘Why did that go nicely? What was our feed cycle? How can we do this once more?’ So it’s very manageable, it’s very measurable,” he stated.
Within the subsequent few weeks, Pepin stated he and enterprise companions Ryan Roy and Adam Platz will assess how quickly to construct out the following 15,000 sq. toes of the ground they occupy on the website, including, amongst different issues, three extra flowering rooms.
“For us, we’re simply owned by two dudes from Auburn and a 3rd dude from Turner, so there’s three of us and we mainly expanded into all of this by constructive money circulation; we don’t have buyers,” Pepin stated. “So proper now the corporate goes by way of development and it’s thrilling, we’re trying on the different part, however we’re actually ensuring that we don’t commit financially to greater than we will deal with.”
The Lewiston facility will develop for adult-use wholesale in addition to supplying JAR’s shops in South Portland and Newry, together with shops deliberate for Windham quickly and Portland and Carrabassett Valley later in 2022.
“There’s a couple of locations in Auburn proper now that we’re inquisitive about that simply gained’t hire to hashish,” Pepin stated. “The search goes on.”
‘THE SOUL OF CANNABIS’
Ryan Wallace, director of the College of Southern Maine’s Maine Middle for Enterprise and Financial Analysis, stated he hopes to safe funding to check employment and the financial affect of the marijuana trade within the state.
“Definitely at first, there’s form of a mad rush in, and over time we’ll form of see who survives,” he stated. “Like all trade, I feel there’ll most likely be some large winners and those which have the biggest scale are in a position to compete — those which are in a position to vertically combine and reap the fee financial savings from that form of integration, the place they’re rising after which producing after which going to retail all owned beneath one roof.”
He sees potential parallels with Maine’s craft brew trade over the previous decade.
“Individuals say, ‘How sustainable is that this?’ There’s nonetheless new breweries popping up left and proper,” Wallace stated. The affect of tourism, too, stays an enormous query, he stated. “Definitely the brewers have tried to reply that, tried to know what they contribute to the state’s tourism financial system.”
McMahan at MEDCo opened shops on Lisbon Road in 2018 and Lewiston’s Foremost Road in 2019. Shops in Gardiner and Newry had been new in 2021.
“We’ve form of constructed a bit little bit of a popularity within the area so far as having high quality stuff, so we see a good bit of individuals with out-of-state med playing cards that come and do some buying,” he stated. “Whether or not they’re coming from New Hampshire or Massachusetts, I’ve to think about that’s the identical for lots of the shops round right here.”
Retailers are likely to view one another as pleasant competitors, he stated. Every has to seek out their area of interest and viewers.
“A number of the companies which have popped up, I feel are in it for all the fitting causes or have the soul of hashish in thoughts, which I feel is a crucial factor to protect as we go ahead,” he stated.
McMahan’s recommendation to the would-be growers who’ve requested about moving into the trade: Know who you’ll be promoting to, he stated. As many storefronts as there seemingly are, many have already got dedicated provide.
“We get dozens of various firms that come by each month making an attempt to promote us their product, and the factor is, we now have relationships that we’ve had for years, so we all know the place our merchandise are going to return from,” he stated. “For 2022, I feel we’re going to see numerous what we noticed in 2021, numerous large grows popping up after which not having wherever to promote it as a result of the shops are already lined up. We’re already seeing numerous the brand new growers that didn’t essentially know what they had been getting themselves into, we’re seeing numerous them form of get into desperation mode.”
Associated Tales
Invalid username/password.
Please examine your e mail to verify and full your registration.
Use the shape under to reset your password. Once you’ve submitted your account e mail, we are going to ship an e mail with a reset code.