After Georgia awarded six licenses to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes, the state’s medical marijuana program remains stalled. Those six licenses were recently tabled following a contentious legislative session, and those who wanted a license but didn’t get one have sued the state.
But even once licenses are cleared, it will be up to a year before products hit shelves.
While customers for medicinal oils might be waiting eagerly, that’s actually a fast timeline for growers – and the clock will be ticking.
That’s because Georgia will give growers only 12 months to set up facilities, grow the product and get their retail stores open (up to 30 dispensaries are authorized to sell medicinal oils).
Nick Sanfilippo, knows the process well as Franklin Street’s Senior Vice President, Project Management who leads the firm’s growing project management business and cannabis business line.
It’s a complex process going from seed to sale, he says, and yet speed to market is important.
Plants require specialized systems to produce a high-quality product, and growing can take up to four months.
Sanfilippo says that is actually a challenge because cannabis growing starts with choice of real estate then build out, growing and processing for sale. And that’s just the industrial side. On the retail side, stores need to be located, built out, merchandised and filled with stock.
Recognizing the cannabis industry as a classic real estate opportunity, Franklin Street has spent years honing its expertise in the cannabis market, developing millions of square feet of vertically integrated cultivation facilities and hundreds of retail dispensaries in more than a dozen states across the country. Franklin Street has emerged as a leading provider of project management services to a growing crop of cannabis operators across the country.
“Developers and construction managers by trade, coupled with our now extensive cannabis experience, we’ve become leaders in successfully getting license holders open within their allotted timelines and budgets,” Sanfilippo says.
Legal cannabis sales in the U.S. likely will surpass $30 billion in 2022, according to forecasts. And Georgia will add to that total once the retail stores are open. However, every week a store is delayed, it means sales are delayed, Sanfilippo says, and that hurts the bottom line.
“A typical grow facility can produce $800,000 a week, so if we can make sure they open on time and don’t miss even two weeks of sales, that can produce an extra $1.6 million. Every day is absolutely critical,” says Sanfilippo.
Franklin Street’s cannabis team deploys a national network of specialized design firms, vendors, consultants, and contractors that are specialized in the cannabis industry that help get grow facilities and retail stores open quickly. Franklin Street also has established relationships with preferred private equity cannabis funding resources.
“Our cannabis project management team helps the growers navigate the development process. This can be the difference between costly stalls and lucrative sales,” Sanfilippo says. “We’re experts in this fast-evolving cannabis market, so we understand how to streamline the facility building process so that high quality product gets to market faster.”
Franklin street currently manages cannabis projects in 14 states, with plans to expand into additional states as more licenses are awarded, including Georgia once legal hurdles are crossed.
