Massachusetts to Get Country’s Biggest Legal Grow

Denver-based AmeriCann is planning to develop what will be the United States’ largest medical marijuana facility in Freetown, Massachusetts. The one million-square-foot Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center is planned for a tract in the Bristol County town formerly slated for a brewery by the Boston Beer Co. 

The Boston Business Journal reported that AmeriCann bought the property this fall for $4.475 million. AmeriCann CEO Tim Keogh said the facility will be “the place in the northeast U.S. for the creation of a wide variety of exciting new advanced products for medical cannabis patients.”

The first phase of the project will include a 130,000-square-foot cultivation and processing area and a separate 30,000-square-foot research and development building, Keogh told the Boston Business Journal. Local contractor Campanelli Construction hopes to break ground in March and wrap up by October 2017. Total costs for the first phase could reach $25 million, Keogh said.

The Coastal Compassion company hopes to have cannabis in production in greenhouses at the site by fall 2017. AmeriCann is also said to be exploring opportunities for development of medical marijuana facilities in California, Pennsylvania and Florida.

The development is part of a growing trend of Colorado canna-businesses setting up shop in Massachusetts, where a legalization initiative was approved by voters in November.

As Quartz noted, the Freetown facility will overtake one currently under construction by GFarmaLabs in Desert Hot Springs, California, which until now, has been the largest in the country. Desert Hot Springs, in Riverside County, declared itself insolvent in 2014 and is now experiencing a real estate boom thanks to the cannabis industry. The three-greenhouse GFarmaLabs facility is to cover 100,000 square feet.

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