Two of Ohio鈥檚 newly licensed medical marijuana cultivators plan to open facilities in Akron, and several more could be coming to Northeast Ohio as well.
The state has for small growers, who can cultivate up to 3,000 square feet. One of the facilities will be in North Hill, run by a Massillon company that also received approval for locations in Canton and Columbus. Another Akron site will be a few blocks south of Firestone Stadium, run by attorney Geoff Korff. He says he became interested in applying for a license after working with medical marijuana advocates on ballot initiatives in the past.
鈥淲hile a lot of cities in Ohio were passing moratoriums and finding ways to not let these facilities come into their cities, Akron said, 鈥榃e want to work with these groups.鈥� And they made it possible to locate our facility there and they鈥檝e been supportive ever since.鈥�
Korff says he鈥檚 budgeted about $1 million to turn the empty lot into a wholesaling facility, which means the plants will grow indoors and not be sold directly to the public.
鈥淲e certainly don鈥檛 want to just drop this in the middle of everybody and have no one know what we鈥檙e doing. So we intend to engage and, to some extent, we鈥檝e already begun that process of trying to talk to the folks that live in that area and other surrounding businesses that we鈥檙e not engaging in this nebulous market. We鈥檙e very serious about what we鈥檙e doing.鈥�
One additional small cultivator could be announced in the future. And later this month, state officials will announce up to a dozen larger growers, who can operate facilities as big as 25,000 square feet.
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