As the smell of marijuana plants wafted through the air from the production facility next door, major U.S. executives and local politicians were all smiles Thursday afternoon.
Members of Hawthorne Gardening company, The Flowr Group and Scotts Miracle-Gro held a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony for a new research and development building that will be open next year on the border of Kelowna and Lake Country.
The building, which was approved by Kelowna city council two months ago, will be the first of its kind in North America. Essentially, Hawthorne Gardening will research and develop ways to grow cannabis better than ever before as Flowr produces the crop next door. It’s something Hawthorne can’t do in the U.S. since the drug isn’t legal federally.
“There haven’t been any purpose-built research facilities about how to grow cannabis as efficiently as possible,” Flowr CEO Vinay Tolia said.
The groundbreaking ceremony came on the heels of RE/Max announcing Kelowna and Edmonton as the two hottest spots in Canada for cannabis commercial real estate. Stephen Fuhr, the Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country, believes B.C.’s attitude—and especially Kelowna’s— toward cannabis is a big reason why that is.
“Between Flowr next door and this facility there will be 200 well-paying jobs for the community,” Fuhr said. “It’ll be a big boost to the economy. It sits right on the border between Kelowna and Lake Country. Both communities will benefit, and I’m thrilled they decided to put it here.”
The reason Scotts and Hawthorne decided to come to Kelowna was because of its relationship with Flowr, which has been producing marijuana plants next door for several months.
“We’ve met with a lot of the large licensed producers up in Canada,” Hawthorne senior vice-president and general manager Chris Hagedorn said. “The reality is we couldn’t have gone many other places. (Flowr co-founder) Tom (Flow) is someone we’ve known for some time and had a good relationship with. (Flowr co-founder) Steve (Klein) … I live five minutes from, just purely coincidentally, back in New York.
“The team that’s been built here is largely without peer, just the quality of the facility and the operation that they run and just the quality of the individuals as well. So for us, there really weren’t as many options as it might have seemed like.”
The research and development building, which will cover 50,000 square feet, will include laboratories, indoor and greenhouse grow suites, training areas and genetics breeding areas.
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