Pubdate: Sun, 19 Oct 2014
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Sun-Times Media, LLC
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/5QwXAJWY
Website: http://www.suntimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/81
Author: Becky Schlikerman
Page: 10

HIGH STAKES

Medical marijuana entrepreneurs want to bring their businesses ( and 
plants) to an Illinois market that could be worth up to $ 1 billion a year

DENVER- Outside the warehouse, even from the road, the smell is unmistakable.

And once you step inside this unassuming building, across the street 
from a busy police station in northeast Denver, you can see it, too:

About 6,500 flowering marijuana plants, each about 6 feet high, 
stretching as far as the eye can see.

The warehouse is one of several in a thriving industrial zone that 
forms the center of a gold rush for Colorado's legal weed farmers.

Locals dub it the "Green Mile."

Along with Washington state, Colorado has been at the forefront of 
the movement to cash in on legal marijuana.

But now marijuana entrepreneurs in the booming new economy have their 
eyes on another market - in the Land of Lincoln.

Figures released by Colorado this month suggest medical marijuana 
sales there are on course to hit $ 395 million this year.

While direct comparisons are imprecise, if Illinois residents 
purchase medical weed at the same rate that Coloradans do, the larger 
market here could be worth nearly $ 1 billion a year. Some experts, 
though, believe that's optimistic because of the limited number of 
growers and sellers under the Illinois program.

A Colorado company called be Mindful that built the vast Denver pot 
farm and helped lobby for the legalization of medical marijuana in 
Illinois, hopes to be one of the players bringing industrial scale 
marijuana farms to Illinois.

Along with a group of Illinois partners, be Mindful is competing to 
win one of 22 coveted state licenses to grow marijuana in Illinois, 
so patients with serious health problems can use the medicinal plant next year.

The partnership, called Illinois Plantco, has drawn up plans for a 
160,000- squarefoot plant, half of which will be given over to a huge 
greenhouse in Will County, where it hopes 125 local workers will one 
day tend pot plants.

"We look forward to basically taking all the hard work we've done 
here in Colorado and applying it in Illinois," be-Mindful CEO Megan 
Sanders said.

"It's great to see the change that's happening," said the company's 
38- year-old chief horticulturist, Phillip Hague, who comes from a 
long line of Texas flower farmers.

"I never thought I would be running a very large cannabis business on 
this scale," he said. "Building greenhouses. Pushing legislation in 
other states. Never in my life did I believe it would happen. It's 
not a dream. It's better than a dream."

' Bubba Tom Hayes'

You're never far from a watchful camera in be Mindful's Denver plant.

The cameras monitor a humdrum office space - unremarkable except for 
the marijuana posters on the walls - and everything through a set of 
doors into the cultivation center.

Vents hum and fans whir throughout the 44,000- square-foot facility.

Sophisticated lighting and watering systems keep the company in the 
weed. Among its more than 65 employees, be Mindful has three 
engineers keeping things running, including one who was, in another 
career, literally a "rocket scientist."

More than 30,000 gallons of water a day are used. Some 3,500 amps of 
electricity keep blinding lights blazing 24- hours a day, Hague said.

"We have rooms that are continually summer; very long days with 18 
hours of light; some up to 24 hours of light," Hague said.

As they grow, plants are moved from room to room.

One room holds the "mother plants." Some have been propagated since 
the 1970s, Hague said.

Another houses the babies. Low lights and palpable humidity soothe 
the tiny green seedlings still trying to establish roots. "This is 
where it all starts," Hague said proudly.

He prefers to grow his plants from seeds "to stay ahead of plants as 
far as disease and pest infestations."

"Cannabis has been grown illegally in people's closets and basements 
and very small greenhouses for the past 50 years," Hague said. "Most 
of the attention has been paid on high THC content, yield, particular 
tastes and smells, and they've put things like disease resistance and 
overall vigor on the back burner."

Hague uses predator mites to take on bad bugs. And he plants green 
beans throughout the marijuana. It's a "flagging plant" that will 
attract a pest and alert farmers. No chemicals are used, he said.

"I love the plant," Hague said. "Being able to incorporate these 
large-scale agricultural practices with a love for this specific 
plant has really been the driving force behind what we do."

Each room houses myriad strains and with names that evoke a bohemian 
idyll. "Highway Man" is described as a "classic hybrid" of the 
legendary "Williams Wonder," "Tang Tang" and "SSSC" strains. "Bubba 
Tom Hayes" is a mix of "Bubba Kush" crossed with "Tom Hills Haze" - 
it "sounds like some old hard- ass Texas sheriff," Hague joked.

Grape soda smells, tooth infection tang

As a plant grows, it's moved to a brighter room. Medicinal plants are 
tagged with yellow labels, while blue labels are attached to plants 
for recreational use.

As the plant sprouts flowers, wispy white buds appear.

The "flowering rooms" get 12 hours of light - automatic timers flip 
the bulbs on and off. It's there that robust plants give off an 
overpowering, earthy, musky scent.

"Skunks and tires. It's one of my favorites," Hague said of the 
smell. "There's a sweetness on the back end of all it, but it's just 
a real musky, chemically smell to me."

Each strain gives off a different scent. There's the "Purple Urkel," 
which "smells purple. Like grape soda and grape Jolly Ranchers - fake 
grape candy," Hague said. Or the "Chemdawg D." "To me [ it] smells 
like a tooth infection," Hague said. It "smells like rotten, bloody 
mouth. It's kind of disgusting."

Each of 12 rooms in the warehouse can hold between 400 and 1,000 
plants - at least $ 500,000 in pot, company officials said. In 
Illinois, they plan 24 rooms.

Once the plants are ready, they're harvested by hand and then trimmed 
either by hand or machine.

Workers, clad in scrubs, set the buds out on wire trays or hang them to dry.

To fill orders, plastic, childproof containers just like those used 
for prescription medicine are filled with the marijuana.

Refuse from the plant isn't wasted. It's used to make concentrate 
products like hash, wax or cannabis oil. Or it's sold to companies 
that make "edibles" - food products infused with THC.

Hague and his team processes more than 450 pounds of marijuana a month.

They hope Illinois medical marijuana patients will benefit from their 
expertise. So far, more than 6,300 seriously ill Illinoisans have 
applied for the right to do so.

"It's a flood of emotion every day to be able to do this," Hague 
said. "To know that something that I fought for so many years-risked 
my livelihood, myself, my family-now that it's in the light and that 
it's legal to a point in this country, it just blows me away."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom