Millions of dollars. Thousands of plants. Breaking down Lewiston-Auburn’s year in marijuana

LEWISTON — In one door of the nondescript Westminster Street building, employees enter and shower before donning scrubs and hairnets.

There’s a back hallway of high-tech heating, ventilating and air conditioning units, and dozens of electrical conduits spanning the ceiling, woven together like unlikely works of art, with 137 security cameras watching it all.

“Every aspect of this room has been engineered for maximum performance,” Joel Pepin said while giving a tour of JAR Cannabis Co.’s new 35,000-square-foot cultivation operation and company headquarters.

They’ve invested more than $3 million and it shows.

Soon, 40 people will work there every day. It’s the city’s single-largest marijuana project of 2021 — next-largest is a $1 million storefront build where McDonald’s used to sit on Lisbon Street.

Across the Androscoggin River in Auburn, 30-something undeveloped acres off Minot Avenue assessed by the city at $199,200 four years ago shot up to $4.8 million in value in 2021, all courtesy of cannabis grows popping up there.

In the Twin Cities, it was definitely a growing year.

For a snapshot of the landscape: Auburn has at least 46 adult-use recreational and medical marijuana operations, from cultivation sites to storefronts, and another 29 applications pending, according to city hall records.

In adult-use operations alone, the city has the third-highest number of active, conditional and pending licenses in the state at 34, behind only Kittery and Portland, as of Nov. 30, according to the Maine Office of Marijuana Policy.

In Lewiston, Director of Planning and Code Enforcement David Hediger has lost count of the number of times he’s said no — No, you can’t locate there. Or there. Or there. — after that city opted for a more purposely spaced-out approach to permitting marijuana operations.

Lewiston has 19 adult-use operations, tied for fourth-most in the state with South Portland.

“I think it’s a question of when does the market become saturated, which apparently, we’re not there yet,” Hediger quipped.

With two shops in Lewiston, Alex McMahan, a founding partner and operating manager at MEDCo, sees more of the same for 2022 with mixed results and potentially rude awakenings.

“Just in the past month, I’ve had everyone from one of our plumbers to one of our food vendors to a couple other random people say, ‘Hey, I’ve got some land, I’ve got some money, so I’m thinking about starting up a grow. What advice would you give me?’” he said. “Some of the people that just threw up a grow in their backyard because they thought they could make a bunch of money, they might realize this isn’t actually worth the headache.”

‘VERY INVITING’

The two cities saw nearly $10 million in marijuana-related construction in 2021 through the end of November, according to permit records.

In Auburn, it was $5.5 million, in Lewiston, $4.3 million, a mix of renovations, new builds and conversions, like a pool supply warehouse-turned-grow-operation on Center Street.

It can be challenging to measure the direct impact to the cities’ bottom lines: the state collects sales tax, not the locals, and investment-intensive operations often qualify for Maine’s Business Equipment Tax Exemption program.

“Elizabeth Ann’s was a convenience store, now it’s a marijuana store — from a building valuation (perspective), there hasn’t been a significant increase,” Hediger said. “Overall the impact has been minimal to the city.”

On the other hand, the Mystique Way Cannabis Park off Minot Avenue in Auburn is one striking example of what growth can mean.

The 38-acre lot was assessed at just under $200,000 in 2017 before a few acres were split off to an abutter.

With the addition of grow operation after grow operation, the assessed value of the land and buildings there increased from $2.7 million in 2020 to $4.8 million in 2021, according to city records.

The difference to the city: Roughly $4,700 in property taxes in 2017 versus roughly $115,000, plus personal property taxes, in 2021, according to Eric Cousens, Auburn’s director of planning and permitting.

“Marijuana businesses are contributing significant tax dollars to pay for city services, and as we approached the limit of not more than 20-25 stores, (we) adjusted our setbacks between businesses from 1,000 feet to 2,000 feet,” he said.

That’s intended to limit more development everywhere but in the city’s industrial zone.

“Auburn has and will always be supportive of new, cutting-edge industry and we will continue to welcome good business people that want to contribute to our city while ensuring that we maintain balance within our neighborhoods and ensure that one industry does not crowd out others,” Mayor Jason Levesque said.

Lewiston native Steve Peters opened a marijuana tissue culture lab on First Flight Drive in Auburn in February 2021 with two business partners. Vertikal Tech’s lab now houses nearly 100 different strains. Crops from the site will supply TheJoint.me, the trio’s new music-themed medical marijuana store opening in Portland soon, not far from Rock Row. Job applicants were encouraged to play an instrument.