8
The Cannabis Ranch
One morning in 2014 I drove out of downtown Denver with the top down. The road took me east, away from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The strip malls and businesses thinned out, and the blocks became more sparsely populated. Warehouses and industrial buildings popped up. I rode along streets lined with chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. When I got to 40th and Ulster, the road petered out. I pulled over and killed the engine.
I was parked outside the gates of an airplane salvage yard. A tall, blue corrugated steel building stood on the other side of a fence. The fuselages of long-retired planes sat in pieces around the site.
The building sat on 15 acres of land, a lopsided rectangle mostly covered with weeds and the remains of dilapidated airplanes. Some were military aircraft dating back to World War II. Others were broken husks of planes that had crashed and now lay around, waiting to be picked apart for parts.
In the 1960s and ’70s, the land had served as a rental car maintenance facility. At some point in its history, one of its owners had installed an underground fuel tank. Another time, a jet fuel storage tank on the adjacent land had burst into flames, coating the land with toxic soot. Somewhere under that soil lay decades of industrial waste buried in a hastily constructed landfill, a sad legacy that spoke of how we humans sometimes treat the earth that is our home.
The land and its tortured history had become part of my plans for the future of our business. When I envisioned the marijuana business I’d be building, I’d been wrestling with two conflicting urges that I’d only recently begun sharing with other people.
One was a problem.
The other was a dream.
The problem was this: From the moment we’d set up shop in the warehouse on South River Platte Drive, it had become obvious to me that the cannabis industry was grossly inefficient. In order to grow our plants inside a cinder-block box, we were forced to replicate what nature does effortlessly. Over the last few years, growers had come and gone, and with each new regime, we had upgraded our equipment. We were now operating with cutting-edge technology. Our warehouses held 350 lights, enough to grow nearly 4,000 plants. We were pushing the envelope, moving beyond my one-light-equals-one-pound rule of thumb to one-and-a-quarter pounds per light, harvesting close to 175 pounds of buds a month.
I loved visiting those rooms.
To walk in in the morning and smell the oxygen-rich air, tinged with just the right hint of moisture, and to smell those flowering buds coming into fragrance was a joyful experience. I was so in love with the aliveness of it all. It was much more gratifying than being stuck in the artificial environment of an office.
But I still disliked that those plants were thriving in an artificial environment of our own making. The lights cycled on and off, dousing the plants with precisely twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness. The plants were surrounded by intake valves and air handlers and air conditioners. The high-pressure sodium lights got so hot that we had set up a separate system to flush out heat. Even the “air” those plants breathed—the carbon dioxide—was supplied by giant tanks that we wheeled in and out for that very purpose. With all the clicking and whirring, it may not have resembled an office, but it did sometimes feel like a factory.
Yes, we got great product this way, but I couldn’t help thinking there was a better way. A more natural way. But every time I talked to expert growers, they told me that this was the only way to get great yields.
I didn’t understand that, because all over the world commercial growers were growing hothouse crops in glass greenhouses. They used the free power of the sun when they could and cracked open windows to allow the free exchange of air and carbon dioxide. Their plants seemed to be doing just fine.
It reminded me of a story.
Once there was a woman who used to bake a ham on holidays and special family occasions. Before she dressed the ham and popped it in the oven, she sliced it in half. Year in and year out, her children watched her do this and always wondered about her culinary technique. Did each half of the ham cook more thoroughly that way? Finally, one day, one of her grown children finally asked her why she did it that way. “I don’t know,” was her response. “That’s the way my mother did it.”
In a sense, that’s what the best minds on cannabis cultivation were saying. They grew inside cinder-block boxes because that’s the way it had always been done. The collective wisdom of the community said this was the best way. But that wisdom dated to a time when the most expert growers were criminals trying to evade the law. It didn’t make sense to grow that way anymore.
We were legal now. It was time to come out of the closet.
Doing so would save us money. It still cost us about $850 to grow a pound of marijuana. If we transitioned to a more natural system, I estimated we could probably get the cost down to $350 a pound—nearly a 60 percent decrease in cost. At that rate, we could charge customers less in our dispensaries and still hit the same profit margin. Conceptually, we would be able to sell to our customers and make money for less than our competitors could even grow their product for. If I was wrong, we would lose big on a very expensive gamble. But if I was right, this model would revolutionize the industry so thoroughly that every large indoor grow would eventually become economically obsolete.
But there were also reasons beyond cost and efficiency. It made sense to me that we’d want to share the cannabis industry with the world. We’d want to stop hiding and start demystifying marijuana for people who were curious about it but afraid to try it. If we could show off a modern, large-scale legal marijuana grow facility and educate people about the product and the brand, it would set Green Man apart.
How could I best share our product with the world?
Get it out in the open was the answer. Get it where they can see it. Offer them tours of your facilities. Get them to get acquainted with Green Man in an environment that was fun and familiar, an environment designed with tourists in mind.
Every year, millions of people visited wineries and breweries the world over. People knew exactly what that experience entailed. They took a little tour. They saw the fermentation tanks. They heard brewers and vintners talk about their work. They visited the gift shop afterward and sampled some of the wares. It was a great experience that had done much to educate Americans about wine and had fostered the growth of the microbrewery industry.
Why couldn’t we do the same with marijuana?
If we were too shy to do such a thing, if we were too scared of the backlash of sharing a formerly criminal drug with the world in such a way, then weren’t we tacitly agreeing that there was something shameful about our product?
The idea for the Cannabis Ranch took root in my imagination and blossomed when I first got into the business. At first, I didn’t share it with too many people. I talked to Mr. Pink about my concept, and though he was enthusiastic, we both realized that it would be a while before we could make the dream happen. At the time, the industry was geared solely toward medical marijuana patients. The only people who could enter a dispensary had to be bearers of a red card. Building an expensive tourist destination for so small an audience was impractical.
But when Colorado voters approved recreational marijuana in 2012, it made sense to start thinking big. That’s when I hired the architect to create a conceptual model and drawings so I could more clearly communicate the dream to others.
In strictest confidence, I shared the concept with Dax, my real estate buddy, who got to work looking for the ideal parcel of land. Whenever I had some time, we’d drive all over the region looking at places that we thought would work. I was picky about finding the right place. I wanted a location that would be highly visible and accessible from Denver International Airport (DIA). I wanted it to be in the city and county of Denver, because it had become the most accommodating to ganjapreneurs lik
e me.
I suppose I could have looked for property outside Denver, but I’d watched other cannabis businesses plunk their cash on land and warehouses outside of town, only to later run afoul of county zoning commissions. The four surrounding counties still didn’t look kindly on marijuana, no matter how legal it was in the state.
No, if I was going to do this, I would have to stay in Denver, which was still marijuana friendly.
This wasn’t the first time I’d come by to see the airplane graveyard. I’d come out the first time with the realtors and had been back several more times to see it on my own. I had a few other parcels in mind, but this was the one that kept reeling me in.
I’d been talking with a businessman from out of town who was keen to invest in the marijuana industry. I met more of these people as the years went by and our business flourished. These days it was tough to find decent investments, especially if you were a man or woman with a billion to your name.
This guy—whom I’ll call William—had been saddened to learn that his out-of-state residency meant that he was ineligible to own stock in a Colorado cannabis company. The state had enacted such a rule to keep the inevitable rush from outsiders at bay. But I had thought of a way that William could help us out. If he was game, he could buy this sad little property, build the facility we needed, and rent it to us for twenty years. It was win-win all around. He’d get the 15-plus percent his portfolio demanded, and he’d get a ringside seat at the table in the cannabis industry. Someday, when the ban on out-of-staters was lifted, maybe he’d be able to invest directly in the marijuana operating company.
I just needed to get him interested in taking a chance on the property. That wouldn’t be easy. The airplane graveyard was near Interstate 70, the main artery leading in and out of downtown Denver, and it wasn’t far from DIA. But the land was hardly a pristine agricultural site.
This place certainly had some environmental issues. Engineers I’d spoken to had said that the section of land atop the landfill would probably sink seven inches over the next twenty years, as the contents of the landfill settled.
But all was not lost. It was possible to salvage a good chunk of the property. The land would cost about $3.2 million, and I’d estimated another $800,000 for environmental cleanup and remediation. We could show the world that it was possible to do some good with an injured piece of land and in a sense atone for our own resource-intensive industry.
I wasn’t planning to plant marijuana directly in the soil. Those precious plants would spend their lives in 5-pound bags of growing medium, just the way we grew them in our warehouse. But I did need the space on the site to construct a greenhouse to enclose them.
As I peered through the chain-link fence now, I tried to imagine just where the greenhouse would go. Once it was built, anyone driving on I-70 toward Denver would see it rising two stories into the air. If you flew into Denver from the sky, you’d spy it out the window of your aircraft. Wouldn’t that be a fine way to get people’s attention? Wouldn’t that make people curious?
Recently, Denver’s Regional Transportation District had made a decision that made this parcel of land even more desirable. It had announced the extension of a light-rail line that would run from the airport straight into town. Three stops in, the light rail would stop at Smith Road and Ulster Street, right at the end of the block where I was standing.
It sounded too good to be true.
It practically made me laugh to think about it. As it was, the state’s airports were strictly off-limits for marijuana. Since recreational marijuana became legal, the state was happy to have travelers come experience Colorado’s exciting new cannabis culture. Come, smoke, get joyfully stoned was the message. But don’t even think of smuggling some of that weed onto an airplane on the way out of town. The city of Colorado Springs had even installed “amnesty boxes” at its airport. As people headed back to the real world, they were encouraged to drop their extra weed in one of these green boxes, no questions asked.
I kept thinking about those travelers at DIA. Some of them never left the airport because they had to catch connecting flights. If our Cannabis Ranch was close by, was it so crazy to envision savvy travelers booking long layovers at DIA so they could catch the light-rail system straight to our front door? They could ride out, take the tour, get stoned, have lunch in our restaurant, get stoned again, and ride the train back to catch their flight.
The idea was so enticing, I couldn’t wait.
I checked my watch. It was time to run out and pick up William. He and his advisor, Justin, were coming back to town to look at this deal again; they’d been out a few times already. They weren’t landing at DIA but rather a private airport in Centennial, Colorado. I’d be waiting on the tarmac for them when their company jet pulled to a stop. I’d give them a warm welcome, then whisk them away for lunch to talk over the deal some more, then out to the site again.
Business deals of this kind are a little like courtship. You both want it to happen, but you’re always wary. It has to feel right, and the numbers have to work.
I wanted to get this thing built badly. But creating the first of anything is never easy.
9
Family: Hageseth; Genus: Cannabis
My wife and I were meeting my oldest daughter’s teacher for the first time on the night of parent–teacher conferences. The teacher leaned forward and said in a low voice: “Before we get started, do you mind my asking you a question? What do each of you do for a living?”
I could see where this was going.
My wife fidgeted. She was nervous. She had not yet come to terms with my business.
“It’s just . . .” The teacher paused. “Your daughter said the other day in class that her daddy grows plants. When I asked her what kind of plants her daddy grew . . . well . . . she said . . . marijuana.”
“That is true,” I said. “I’m in the medical marijuana business. I grow in a large warehouse and do it legally. I don’t grow at home.”
Just because you know what you do for a living doesn’t mean everyone around you can explain it. I was beginning to realize that the people closest to me—my family—were struggling with a variety of conflicting feelings about my line of work.
I thought I’d prepared well for this. When I first got into the cannabis industry, I made an effort to read as much as I could about marijuana. I wanted to be as educated as possible. I knew there would be questions from family members. A few in my family are deeply religious. After a lifetime of associating marijuana with sin, they might be troubled by my new venture. So I read up, I studied, I thought hard about my reasons for choosing this life. I wanted to be able to answer their questions in a loving and considered way.
Of course, that started with my children. I wanted them to grow up as healthy, responsible members of society. When they asked about my work, I gave it to them straight. Marijuana was a product that adults used to relax, not unlike alcohol and something like cigarettes. Yes, our state had legalized marijuana as medicine, but at the time we were speaking, it was available for sale only to adults over twenty-one who had demonstrated medical need.
I also watched what sort of language I used. I didn’t want them to hear a lot of limiting messages when they were growing up. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Watch out for that. That sort of language only made kids afraid of the world. I’d prefer that they knew what all these vices were capable of doing to people, so they’d be better able to make good choices.
For example, I hoped that I’d be able to raise daughters who were strong enough to say no to drugs like cocaine or heroin. I hoped that those substances would strike them as highly addictive, dangerous, and capable of killing them via overdose.
There are certainly issues surrounding marijuana use and adolescents. There’s evidence, for example, that marijuana may impair growing minds and bodies. But if one of my daughte
rs was moved to experiment with marijuana someday, I think I’d be thankful that she wasn’t getting addicted to nicotine or messing with alcohol. Teens on alcohol have just enough courage and bravado to do something stupid. In less than an hour, they’re capable of making a string of bad decisions that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. I’m not denying that there have been stoned adolescents and adults who have, say, gotten behind the wheel of a car. But if your kid is toking in the basement with friends, some of the most likely outcomes are that they will watch a ton of movies on Netflix, have a mind-blowing realization, laugh a lot, order in a pizza, clean their entire room, or pass out on the couch.
I think parents who have some experience with marijuana understand this. I get in these kinds of exuberant arguments with people all the time. “Look,” I recently told a group of moms, “say your kids are out for the night. They have a bottle of Jack Daniel’s or a bag of weed, and they are going to use one of them. Which would you rather have them do?”
Hands down, the moms all said marijuana.
I don’t think that kind of response would have been possible in the 1930s, during the days of Reefer Madness. Parents back then would not have had enough personal experience with the drug to know that there was a difference. They would have bought the government-backed party line that marijuana would drive their children insane and compel them to commit murder.
I suppose we can all be grateful that so many adults these days have smoked marijuana. It’s making them better parents. Not necessarily more tolerant, mind you, just more educated and realistic.
Big Weed Page 11
