Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Applicants question pot permit process
The question of which of the 45 applicants in southeastern Pennsylvania would be selected to open a medical marijuana growing facility was answered Tuesday when two firms in Berks County were named.
But the answer has spawned a whole new set of questions and a likely appeal from a group that hopes to establish one of those facilities in Pottstown.
For the purposes of awarding medical marijuana grow permits, the commonwealth was divided into six regions. The southeast region was comprised of Philadelphia and seven surrounding counties — Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Montgomery and Schuylkill.
Jon Cohn, CEO of Agronomed Pharmaceuticals LLC, which had proposed a grow facility at 740 Queen St. in Pottstown, said he and his partners are puzzled by the scorecards released by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
For example, Cohn noted that the application by Holitstic Farms, the company seeking to establish a grow facility on the old Flagg Brass property in West Pottsgrove, scored 670.11.
But, like many applicants, Holistic Farms filed in more than one region.
“Their score in the northwest region was 741.69, and I know for a fact it was the exact same application. How is that possible? The state said location would not be a factor.” “It’s very baffling,” said Cohn. He also struggled to understand how his company’s application scored higher in the growing, nutrient and processing sections, than the experts from Franklin Labs, which has operations in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Colorado, “when, quite frankly, we’ve never done that before.”
Also, “we really spent a lot of our time on our community impact score, working with the bor-
ough, PAID, PDIDA, the police department, The Hill School, to see how we could have the biggest impact,” said Cohn.
“We had a multi-level plan for community impact that focused on economic development,” said Cohn.
“Like most of the applicants, we were going to return 5 percent of profits to the community, but we also developed a partnership with Montgomery County Community College to share research with their aeroponics lab; we were going to buy some of the street cameras the police are erecting, we were working with PAID and PDIDA on revitalizing a block of buildings on High Street, but we only scored 50 out of 100” on the community impact portion of the scorecard.
“But the biggest question is about quality control because it was a check box. It was the only section of the application that did not allow a narrative, but somehow we lost 14 points — based on what?” Cohn asked.
As a result of the unanswered questions about how the ratings on the scorecard were calculated, Cohn said his company has little choice but to appeal the decision, given that there are only 10 days to file an appeal and its the best way to preserve their options.
Geoffrey Whaling has questions too.
Whaling is president of Bunker Botanicals, the company which had proposed to grow medical marijuana in a relic of the Cold War — an underground communications bunker off Porter Road in Lower Pottsgrove.
He struggled to understand how the winning application by Franklin Labs secured a better security score — 36 out of 50 — than his project — 31 out of 50.
“What’s more secure than an underground bunker? The Pepsi facility in Reading goes right up to the sidewalk, they can’t even put a fence around it,” Whaling said, referring to the soda bottling facility near the minor league baseball stadium where the Reading Fightin Phils play their games.
He also questioned how Prime Wellness can be ready for production in six months, as the permit requires, when it has not even made any contact with South Heidelberg Township about land development or local permits.
Whaling also said he has heard a lot of talk among those who submitted applications about the fact that the two winning permits are both backed by connections in Pennsylvania’s power politics.
John Hangar, chairman of the board for Franklin Labs, served as Gov. Tom Wolf’s chief policy advisor until 2016, the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Ed Rendell, is a former member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and even briefly ran for governor.
One of the two founding partners for Prime Wellness is the Lenfest Group, founded by H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest, who also founded Lenfest Communications, which was sold to AT&T and ultimately became the communications giant Comcast.
The Lenfest Group is a philanthropic organization which donated the Philadelphia Media Network, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, to the Philadelphia Foundation.
That organization also donated $10,000 to the effort to replace the lights at Pottstown High School’s Grigg Memorial Stadium.
But ultimately, said Whaling “I do not think this ended up being financially or politically motivated.” Cohn agreed. “This is so high-profile, I have to believe trying to mess with the process would become a real liability, because it would come out eventually,” he said.
“Franklin Labs is a truly solid applicant and I have said they would be our main competition all along,” said Cohn.
The Department of Health has taken steps to ensure the review and scoring of applications would not be affected by outside influence. The names of the reviewers from various state departments were not released, and applications were opened in a formal process with at least two other witnesses.
The applications were redacted so it was not readily clear to the reviewers who the applicants were, so they could be scored simply on the merits of the application, John Collins, director of the office for medical marijuana, said during the announcements of permit winners Tuesday.
Cohn said he hopes if his company’s appeal is not successful, that it will at least answer some of those questions. And even if it does not win a permit from this round, “we’re definitely looking at applying again,” he said, adding “and we want to stay in Pottstown. We think its the right place to be.”
Whaling also said he was not too discouraged by the result of the permit awards and would consider submitting a subsequent application when more permits are made available.
“We have the bunker, it’s been empty for 12 years, so what’s two more years? A lot of things could happen,” he said.
A longtime advocate for medical marijuana and hemp products before he ever tried to go into business, Whaling said primarily he is pleased to see Pennsylvania one step closer to “getting medicine to the patients who need it.”
“What’s more secure than an underground bunker?” Geoffrey Whaling, Bunker Botanicals