Saanich dairy farm eyed as site for $500m pot operation
VICTORIA — A Central Saanich dairy farm previously known for a pungent compost facility is being eyed as the site of a $500-million licensed marijuana-growing operation.
Shawn Galbraith is planning a five- to seven-year project that envisions 21 greenhouses on 36 acres of Stanhope Dairy Farm. If all goes to plan, the facility would become one of the largest marijuana facilities in Canada. Galbraith previously built a concrete bunker on Lochside Drive, adjacent to Michell’s Farm, to house a Health Canada-approved cannabis operation. Galbraith, who owns Evergreen Medicinal Supply Inc., is purchasing the Stanhope farm on Old East Road, and has Health Canada approval to build a single 150,000-square-foot, $25-million greenhouse.
That would be more than double the size of the Tilray marijuana production facility in Nanaimo. Tilray, which employs 200 people, is B.C.’s largest medical pot producer.
“It’s an important project. I can’t emphasize how important it is for the region,” said Galbraith, a 55-year-old former contractor who wants to be a big player in the country’s cannabis industry once the drug is legalized in July.
“We began to realize that three-acre site (next to Michell’s Farm) wasn’t going to be able to produce the economy of scale to compete in the industry.”
The cannabis will be sold only through legal, licensed distribution channels and not to any dispensaries, Galbraith said. The glass and metal greenhouses would be built near where Lochside Drive becomes the Lochside Trail. A two-metre, tree-topped berm will provide a buffer between the high-security facility and trail users, Galbraith said.
Much like the concrete bunker to the north, the facility would be surrounded by barbed-wire fences and equipped with lights and cameras.
Galbraith said there have been no security concerns or attempted break-ins at the existing Lochside Drive facility, which he likens to a bank vault.
The first greenhouse would have the capacity to produce 18,000 kilograms of dried cannabis a year.
Stanhope Dairy Farm, owned by brothers Gord and Robert Rendle, was at the centre of a lengthy battle over a composting plant because it produced a stench that infuriated neighbours.
The compost facility resulted in 1,400 complaints registered by 50 people between April and September 2013 and led to a lawsuit by a group called Stop the Stink against Foundation Organics. In 2017, the owners agreed to stop bringing in food scraps and construction debris for composting.
Neither Rendle responded to requests for comment on the sale of the property. The 98-acre farm was listed for $12 million, but Galbraith would not confirm the purchase price.
He said the marijuana greenhouses would not cause a smell. “We have a closed looped system so there’s no discharge of any odour,” he said.
But Frans Winkel, who has raised pig, sheep and chickens on an adjacent 18-acre farm for 50 years, is skeptical. “That’s what Rendle claimed, too,” said 80-year-old Winkel.