What do you think?
Here's how followers on our Facebook page reacted to the news of Moraine and Middletown being possible legal marijuana growing sites:
Kimberly King: So, do I understand this to mean that only this group of investors will get to grow it? So this is just a big money grab by these people who own a smattering of farmland throughout the state. Sounds like a bunch of crap to me. Let everyone have a plant or two, not just a select few people.
Polly Morgan: Empty greenhouse in Piqua and we need jobs.
David Andrews: Vote no! Just because it sounds good, read the fine print! Do it like colorado or dont do it at all.
Marty Jones: Those who complain about monopoly, did you complain about the casinos? At least these lobbyists are doing something that will create jobs and tax revenue. Potheads and hippies have failed for the last 10 years. Vote yes and maybe save the Ohio economy.
Sites in Moraine and Middletown would be home to two of 10 indoor marijuana growing facilities if Ohio voters approve a constitutional amendment in November to legalize pot for recreational and medical uses, documents released Monday show.
ResponsibleOhio released a 24-page summary of the ballot language that identifies where each of 10 grow sites will be. Investors bought or arranged purchase options on the 10 sites.
Those locations include a 50.8-acre parcel owned by the city of Moraine, 35 acres owned by a Dayton-area physician and more than 40 acres in Middletown, records show.
City officials did not know that the buyer wanted the land to build a marijuana factory in the Moraine Commerce Park off South Gettysburg and Daruma Parkway, said Moraine City Manager David Hicks.
“They had in fact told us it would be a new product that they’d be offering in Ohio. We had no idea that it would be marijuana. That would certainly be new to Ohio, I guess. That was true at least,” Hicks said. “I thought they could have been a little more forth coming with us in our conversations. We thought it would be some new kind of widget or something. It never occurred to us that it would be part of this plan.”
Last month the Moraine City Council voted to allow Hicks to enter into an agreement with an unnamed company interested in buying 50.8 acres at Moraine Commerce Park for $1.9 million. The option to make the purchase expires Dec. 31.
The agreement listed LGR Realty, Inc. of Columbus as the company brokering the land deal. Attempts Monday to reach Jeff Ungar, listed as the company’s representative in the agreement, were unsuccessful.
The company interested in buying the land, Hicks said last month, is operated by a Kentucky woman with a strong, stable track record who is known and respected by some in the Miami Valley business community.
An attorney representing the company declined to discuss the issue Monday. When asked if the business involved marijuana growing, J. Stephen Smith of Fort Mitchell, Ky. said he “really can’t disclose anything to do” with the company.
Hicks said last month the prospective buyer was a light-manufacturing and assembly firm that would bring 130 jobs to Moraine with initial plans build a 100,000 square foot facility that could expand to 300,000 square feet and employee more than 250 workers at pay and benefits worth between $15 and $25 an hour.
At that time, Hicks said “Their product is confidential even to us at this point.”
Knowing that the project hinged on voters approving a statewide ballot issue to legalize pot would have changed the discussion with Moraine city council members, Hicks said Monday. “If it fails, I assume the option will expire without being exercised so we will have taken the property off the market for a year. That would have been a consideration as well, not just purely the issue about the product itself, but the tentative nature of this offer.”
Dayton-area doctor owns proposed site in Liking County
The ResponsibleOhio document also lists a property as a designated grow site that records show is owned by Dayton area physician. Licking County records show more than 35 acres in Pataskala near Columbus to be owned by Dr. Suresh Gupta, operator of the Dayton Outpatient Center.
Gupta purchased the land from Stebleton & Neary Investment LLC for $282,000 on Jan. 7, according to a spokeswoman from the Licking County Auditor’s Office. Gupta could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman from his office said he recently sold the property though did not provide details about the transaction and new owners.
40 acres in Middletown for pot growing
News that a 40-plus-acre property on the border of Middletown and Monroe could house an indoor marijuana growing facility has local businesses wary, and local elected officials completely against the idea.
The two adjoining parcels, within the confines of Todhunter and Yankee roads, are currently owned by Trenton-based Magnode Corporation, an extrusion company. But President/CEO Martin Bidwill said that the property has been for sale for at least five years. Monday was the first he had heard about the possibility of it becoming a grow site for marijuana.
He said that about a month ago, he was approached by a potential unidentified buyer via a Columbus realty company. That buyer put a down payment on the property as part of an option agreement where the property was taken off the market for at least six months.
“But we were never told who the buyer is, and we still don’t know to this day,” Bidwill said. He added that as long as the buyer buys the land legally, and should marijuana become legalized in Ohio, he doesn’t think he has a right to judge.
“We’ll just let it play out,” he said. “I have no right to say anything in regards to a legal status of a company.”
Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said not only does he not support the idea but he will actively “campaign against it.”
“I’m going to be very boisterous,” he said on his efforts to oppose the potential constitutional amendment. “I have the bully pulpit and I’m going to use it.”
Jones said because marijuana is considered a gateway drug, drug problems in the country just start there.
“We have enough issues and it’s a slippery slope,” he said. “It’s a little bag of weed and they start smoking that … and where it ends up is my jail being full of people that do this drug.”
In Franklin County, the proposed location is 19.117 acres on Seeds Road near Grove City south of Interstate 71. The property owner listed in Franklin County Auditor’s records is Kenneth R. Campbell of Mason. Campbell, who also splits his time in Hilton Head, S.C., could not be reached for comment.
Where will the other sites be?
Other counties that will host grow sites: Clermont, Hamilton, Lorain, Lucas, Stark and Summit. All told, ResponsibleOhio has locked up access to 344 acres across the state for growing sites.
The ballot language also says marijuana quality testing facilities will be located near universities in Athens, Lorain, Mahoning, Scioto and Wood counties, and Cuyahoga County will be home to a business incubator that spurs firms to conduct research and development into marijuana products.
Chris Stock of ResponsibleOhio, the campaign to legalize pot, said each grow site will start with a 100,000-square-foot state-of-the-art buildings that would eventually triple in size.
But before the first cannabis seed is planted, ResponsibleOhio must get its ballot summary language approved by Attorney General Mike DeWine and then get the nod from the Ohio Ballot Board that the proposal covers just one issue. Once it clears those hurdles, ResponsibleOhio must collect 305,600 valid signatures from registered Ohio voters by July 1 to make it on the November ballot. The campaign to gather signatures and win over voters is expected to cost $20 million to $25 million.
If ResponsibleOhio wins at every step of the way, Ohio would become the first state in the country to go directly from a total ban on marijuana to legalizing pot for both medicinal and adult recreational purposes. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia already have some level of legal marijuana.
“We are excited to have the ballot language out there because it gives us all an opportunity to really talk in terms of specifics,” Stock said. The proposal shows that “ResponsibleOhio is working hard to put together a public policy that regulates a multi-billion dollar industry in a responsible way,” he said.
Stock noted that if voters approve the ballot issue in November, Gov. John Kasich would be required to appoint a seven-member Marijuana Control Commission by mid-December and it would have to hold its first meeting within five days. Investors in marijuana grow sites would build out the factories and be operational by spring 2016 and the firsts plants would be ready for harvest six to 10 weeks later, he said.
ResponsibleOhio is backed by deep-pocket investors that include financiers, current and former professional athletes, real estate developers and others. It is opposed by anti-drug organizations, five statewide officeholders including Kasich and DeWine, and grassroots marijuana groups that believe carving out just 10 growing sites will unfairly block others who want to cultivate cannabis for sale.
Staff writers Michael D. Pitman and Vivienne Machi contributed to this report.
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