From hard time to high times: Cannabis growing facility proposed for former Warwick prison
When Mid-Hudson Correctional Facility closed in 2011, it freed up 740 acres of prime property that its host community, Warwick, readily bought for $3.1 million.
During the past decade, the town has actively worked to repurpose the property and has seen positive results from its efforts. With Covid-19 fading and the state reopening, business is again percolating on the former prison property, now known as Wickham Woodlands.
Along with a new Warwick Valley Office and Technology Corporate Park on the campus, where the town”™s business accelerator is working with three-startup companies, business is growing along its winding State School Road: a former administration building has become the trendy Drowned Lands Brewery; the prison”™s old guard tower is now the gateway to Hudson Sports Complex; and the land surrounding Wickham Lake, which inmates could view from behind barbed wire fencing, has been turned into a town park.
The Warwick Valley”™s fertile landscape also offers ample opportunities for those who grow hemp and its soon-to-be-street legal counterpart, marijuana, and is seeing that business beginning to boom within Wickham Woods”™ borders.
When the United States eased federal regulations on growing hemp in 2018, the floodgates of products produced from hemp”™s byproduct, cannabidiol ”” better known to the public as CBD ”” started hitting the shelves.
Medical marijuana has been legal since 2016, and the state also relaxed its regulations for CBD-infused food and beverages. In April, 2021, the New York state Legislature approved the legalization of recreational marijuana, which has opened a whole new revenue stream for cultivators. Those measures have propelled Wickham Woods into the spotlight for those with a vested interest in both legal hemp/cannabis cultivation and CBD production.
Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries is poised to build a 100,000-square-foot cannabis growing and processing facility on 40 acres in the technology park. The company received approval in May from the Orange County Industrial Development Agency for subsidies that include a sales and tax use exemption, mortgage recording tax exemption and a 15-year payment in lieu of taxes, as well as approval for the issuance of taxable revenue bonds.
When the $154.5 million project is complete, Green Thumb Industries expects to have 125 full-time workers. The company has 2,400 employees and is active in more than a dozen states. Green Thumb Industries also owns Rise Dispensaries, with locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“Right now, there”™s a lot happening with Wickham Woodlands,” Warwick Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton said. “We are expecting Phyto Pharma to open within the next eight months. Urban Extracts (a company licensed to both grow and sell hemp-related products) is going into the former dairy barn on the site and will also be cultivating cannabis on 10 to 15 acres.
“Sativa Medical has started construction on its medical marijuana dispensary and expects to begin its operations by end of the year. Our business accelerator is also doing well; we”™re glad to see commerce opening up again after what”™s been an extremely difficult and challenging year.”
The town must also decide whether it”™s going to opt-in or opt-out of allowing the sale of marijuana. At a recent Orange County Association of Towns, Villages and Cities meeting in Sugar Loaf”™s Lyceum Theatre, Sweeton and other elected officials discussed the challenges of permitting legal weed.
Towns that allow marijuana to be sold will be obligated to share 25 percent of the profit from those sales with any village within its borders. Villages also have the ability to opt-in; however, they are not obliged to share their profits with the town. All cities, towns and villages in New York state must decide by Dec. 31 if they plan to permit or forbid the sale of cannabis within their municipal borders.