Marijuana growers having hard time finding land

The operators of a proposed pot farm in Blackstone are still looking for a home

BLACKSTONE – It’s not a dead deal yet, but the chances of Beacon Compassion Center finding suitable land in town to build its proposed marijuana cultivation and processing facility are looking more and more unlikely now that Kimball Sand Co. has backed out of a land purchase deal with the company.

What is certain is that the marijuana farm development proposal will not be coming before town meeting voters this spring.

“Beacon Compassion Center was going to be on the warrant for the special town meeting on May 2, but they (Beacon) are not ready yet,” said Blackstone Selectmen Chairman Robert J. Dubois. “The location where they wanted to go didn’t work out, but they’re still looking.”

A non-profit, registered medical marijuana dispensary, Beacon has been working for the several weeks with Blackstone Town Administrator Daniel M. Keyes and town planning consultant Gino D. Carlucci to identify potential locations in town for the grow facility.

Dubois said Thursday that Beacon’s hunt for land in town has been difficult at best.

“The problem is that they need at least 50 acres and that’s hard to find in Blackstone,” he said. “It’s not like we can put it near a school or in a residential area.”

Beacon Compassion Center Executive Director Steve Angelo and CEO Catherine “Rina” Cametti told the Blackstone Planning Board last month that they were negotiating a purchase and sales agreement with Kimball Sand Co. – a familyowned-and-operated stone and gravel company – to buy 52.1 acres for the facility, which would have been set back in an undeveloped area near the 570-megawatt International Power America power plant built on Kimball land more than 15 years ago.

The land, which abuts Bellingham Road in Bellingham, has access off Elm Street, via a long dirt road across from the pumps by the Mill River known locally as the Air Strip. It was described by Angelo and Cametti as the perfect site because of its nearby access to Route 495.

But two weeks after they announced the deal, Kimball backed out, leaving Beacon Compassion Center back at square one.

Dubois said the town owns its own 50-acre parcel near the power plant that would be suitable, but it is under a covenant which prohibits the town from selling it

Beacon is not proposing a retail dispensary, but rather its first grow facility in which marijuana would be cultivated, processed and then delivered to its three retail dispensaries across the state, including Framingham, New Bedford and West Roxbury.

Meanwhile, the Planning Board will be asked by Beacon to approve four minor amendments to a town zoning bylaw that regulates the location of medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation centers. Those components of the bylaw speak more to retail marijuana facilities than cultivation facilities and must be amended at the special town meeting to allow Beacon Compassion Center to come into town.

Beacon has provisional licenses for dispensaries in Framingham, New Bedford and a third location about to be finalized in West Roxbury. All of the marijuana for those dispensaries will be grown exclusively at the facility in Blackstone.

According to Angelo, the roughly 35,000- to 70,000-square-foot cultivation and processing facility would cost $3 to $10 million to construct and employ 50 to 100 people. About 10,000 square feet of the facility would house offices, a kitchen and areas for extraction and processing, while the remaining 25,000 square feet would be used strictly for growing.

The facility would not be open to the public and would employ strict security measures to protect the building and its contents. The facility would not only pay taxes to the town, but $100,000 to $500,000 in impact fees annually.

Since voters in Massachusetts approved medical marijuana in 2012, six dispensaries have opened around the state with two more slated to open in Framingham, including Beacon Compassion Center, which will renovate three suites on Worcester Road to serve as a new dispensary. The property lies near the intersection of Rte. 9 and Rte. 126.