Downtown Ansonia below City Hall. Derby’s redevelopment zone on Main Street along the Housatonic River. Tri-Town Plaza in Seymour.
Could the key to sparking an economic revival in these under-developed properties be — marijuana?
A 2012 state law legalizing medicinal marijuana has cannabis capitalists trying to invest in Connecticut.
They’re anticipating a need for large, controlled grow operations in warehouses to support dispensaries where people with certain debilitating illnesses — and a doctor’s certification — could get the drug.
Seriously, Everything Wants To Open In Shelton
The commercial growers are looking around the Valley, with its excess of former factory space — and Shelton specifically.
“I’ve had interested growers contact my office,” Shelton Planning and Zoning Administrator Richard Schultz said Wednesday.Schultz said the growers are interested in Shelton because the city has warehouse space along Canal Street and Bridgeport Avenue that might be adapted as a medical marijuana production facility.
But don’t expect to see Mayor Mark Lauretti at any weed farm ribbon-cuttings anytime soon.
“It’s not something that I have an interest in,” Lauretti said. “We have well-established priorities for growth (and) economic development. That’s not one of them.”
On Tuesday, members of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission took the first step toward instituting a moratorium on applications for medical marijuana facilities until new state rules governing the process are reviewed.
Commissioners made the move because they didn’t want to get hit with an application for something related to medicinal marijuana without having something on the books to guide them.
A public hearing on the proposed moratorium is scheduled for Aug. 9.
“We’re just being proactive,” said Anthony Pogoda, a planning and zoning commissioner.
Elsewhere
Elected officials aren’t too comfortable talking about a commercial marijuana growing operation in terms of possible economic development.
Seymour First Selectman Kurt Miller said he couldn’t comment until he had more information. Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri and Ansonia Mayor James Della Volpe declined comment.
Their silence could be indicative of the stigma attached to marijuana use, not to mention growers. It could be a particularly sensitive issue in the lower Valley, where past surveys have revealed high incidents of drug use among underage students.
But there’s a growing trend to decriminalize marijuana.
An April Pew Research Center poll found that 52 percent of Americans favored legalizing the drug.
Its ability to relieve pain and suffering for people with diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis is widely accepted.
Entrepreneurs are lining up.
Frederick Petrella, of the New Haven-based Connecticut Realty Group, LLC, said he recently heard from an investment banker looking to fund a dispensary who was interested in two properties Petrella’s company is marketing in the Interstate 91 corridor.
And the businesses looking to start cultivation operations are not “guys in dreadlocks in basements,” said Jay Czarkowski, a managing partner at Canna Advisors, a Colorado company that advises medical cannabis start-up companies.
Czarkowski and his wife, Diane, opened Boulder Kind Care (BKC) a medical marijuana business with a retail center and production facility in Colorado in 2009, according to his company’s website.
Coming Home?
Czarkowski is a Connecticut native, Newington to be exact — and he wants to help start a cultivation operation back in his home state.
“When we got into this business and opened a dispensary, I saw first-hand how truly powerful marijuana is as a medicine,” he said.
“That’s what people need to start learning about in Connecticut. Once people start to become more educated about cannabis, they won’t be thinking ‘Oh my God, there’s a dispensary coming to my town.’”
Czarkowski said the medical cannabis industry is growing — and moratoriums like the one in Shelton deny municipalities the ability to expand the tax base.
“We heard early on that Shelton wanted to have a moratorium,” Czarkowski said. “We decided not to look in Shelton.”
Czarkowski said the medial marijuana industry has helped boost flagging real estate markets before.
Could Derby be next?
“When this industry began to blow up in Colorado, it was really in the dark depths of the recession, back in 2008 and 2009,” he said. “There was so much available real estate. Medical marijuana saved a lot of landlords from foreclosure and bankruptcy. Millions of square feet (was absorbed) in Denver alone.”
Click here for a story from the Denver Post looking at the industry’s impact on economic development.
Czarkowski said he and a group of business partners are looking for Connecticut locations from the New York border to New Haven and north as far as Waterbury.
The Law
The 2012 Connecticut legislation, considered among the most restrictive of its kind, left the task of regulating the new medical marijuana system to the Department of Consumer Protection, which in April unveiled 76 pages of proposed regulations and took hours of testimony on the issue.
Consumer Protection will send a set of final regulations to a committee of lawmakers by the end of the month. The rules could go into effect later this year, department spokesperson Claudette Carveth said Wednesday.
Under the law, state-registered patients or their caregivers may obtain marijuana from dispensaries, which in turn obtain marijuana from licensed producers.
According to the law, patients must be 18 or older, and under the proposed regulations, producers must provide an application fee of $25,000, an additional $75,000 if accepted, and a $2 million bond payable to the state if they fall behind on production quotas.
Click here for more info from the Department of Consumer Protection website.
Carveth said municipal officials from other communities have contacted the DCP about the new medical marijuana program.
While some might be adopting new zoning regulations, most are taking a wait and see approach, she said.
Warehouses Needed
Czarkowski wouldn’t comment about what specific towns in Connecticut he’s checked out.
He said investors in the cannabis industry need warehouses, and factories. Rundown old buildings aren’t out of the question.
Cultivators and dispensaries would have to put money into the properties anyway, he said.
“It doesn’t have to be a brand new, state of the art facility. It could be an older building,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of hanging lights and putting some plants on the ground. The buildout to retrofit one of these warehouses is anywhere from $30 to $50 per square foot.”
Czarkowski said that since the Connecticut law mandates that marijuana be grown in a secure, indoor facility, “The approach that all of the licensed applicants are taking in Connecticut now is they’re all looking for warehouse space.”
Those operations will probably start out at around 20,000 to 30,000 square feet apiece, he said, but as patient count grows, so will demand.
“Those warehouses are probably going to have to be over 100,000 square feet,” he said.
Besides the space, he said the other top priority for any grower will be electricity — lots of it, with the plants receiving anywhere from 12 to 18 hours of light per day.
