The property was a former refrigerator parts manufacturing and warehouse facility located in a FEMA-designated flood zone. The first phase of the project upgraded the building envelope and established flood barriers in preparation for the fit out of the cultivation and processing spaces in subsequent phases. The cultivation facility is a combination of single and multi-tier grow rooms, featuring a mixture of LED and metal halide lighting systems. The air handling systems are fitted with hot gas reheat and work with separate dehumidification units as a backup to the main air conditioning equipment. The facility is outfitted with an Argus control system for the integration of lighting, fertigation, environmental control and carbon dioxide supplementation.

Historically, the property was a leather factory and a significate employer in the local community and was shuttered in 2011, after laying off around 1,600 employees over the previous decade. With IIP’s total investment in the property of approximately $43 million, the site now employs approximately 140 employees, and has contributed meaningfully as a source of job creation and financial stability in the community. At completion, Columbia Care expects the facility to provide direct employment opportunities for up to 350 individuals. Columbia Care also utilized its experience and understanding from facilities that it owns across the United States to incorporate additional efficiencies in the buildout of the remaining 163,000 square feet of the facility. While natural gas service is not within reach for the facility, the project will be implementing hot-gas reheat enabled direct expansion air conditioning and will be collecting the condensate for reuse by the fertigation systems. In addition to recovering condensate from the HVAC units, the new flood table fertigation recovery system is designed to allow 100% of the fertigation water to be consumed by the plants, and to eliminate runoff into the sanitary drainage system. As part of the expansion, Columbia Care is working with the utility company to remove their service from the local electrical grid by installing a high voltage 115kV substation. This provides increases in efficiency, saving costs on electricity, but also being a good steward to neighbors and keeping their electrical infrastructure costs low while enhancing reliability for both Columbia Care and the local grid. The single and multi-tier grow will utilize LED lighting and air movement systems all controlled by a centralized Argus control system in order to provide high-capacity production of cannabis flower and extractable materials to serve the medical patients of Pennsylvania.

The buildings at this Massachusetts property were originally built in 1899 and 1915, with a long history of industrial and manufacturing usages before being shuttered by Union Tool & Die in 1982. The buildings remained vacant until IIP and a tenant partnership came to fruition to repurpose them as a cannabis cultivation and production facility. Significant investments were made to retain the existing structure, including remediation of hazardous materials in order to make the building safe to occupy in its new modern use. In addition, a majority of the existing structure was retained and additional supports were installed to handle the increased load of new operations. Most importantly, our tenant, Ascend Wellness Holdings, brought hundreds of permanent cannabis industry jobs to a town that has struggled after other industries left that area, in addition to construction jobs that were created during the buildout of this facility and numerous jobs performing ancillary services.

This Massachusetts building was originally built in 1890 to produce thread and textiles. It is ideally located near the intersection of two major interstate highways, providing for efficient distribution of goods and employee transportation needs. IIP, in partnership with our tenant partner, Trulieve, repurposed the existing structure for cannabis cultivation and processing while preserving the building shell and core elements. Improvements our funding enabled include:
• Preservation of the historic stairwell
• Retaining a majority of the exterior façade, including brickwork, structural framing and floor decking, thus diverting debris from a landfill
• Maintaining architectural integrity by preserving the windows facing the canal
• Modernizing the elevators in lieu of full replacement.
In addition, other tenant improvement projects included installing energy efficient systems designed to reduce energy consumption and environmental impacts. These improvements included:
• Installation of LED lighting for most of the cultivation and ancillary spaces; and
• Installing a Building Management System to improve environmental controls to reduce energy consumption.