Industrial Strength: Cannabis & Indoor Agriculture

Indoor agriculture has become increasingly popular in recent years, likely due to the benefits offered through this grow method. Often considered the future of farming, indoor agriculture has the potential to increase overall food production to meet rising demands with limited resources.

Epstein's extensive experience in DesignBuild of cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facilities lends itself well to this adjacent, and booming, industry. Much like various foods, cannabis thrives in a particular environment and requires special considerations related to humidity and moisture, water and condensation, and temperature.

Below are examples of Epstein's work in the cannabis cultivation space:

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Lakeville aerial

Nature's Remedy
Lakeville, MA

Epstein is supporting our client as they continue to expand their footprint through acquisition of Nature’s Remedy, a vertically-integrated Massachusetts cannabis operator. As such, Epstein is providing DesignBuild services for the renovation of roughly 50,000 square feet of a 185,000 square foot multi-tenant, formerly cold storage, industrial building.

The project consists of a variety of tenant improvements in several areas of the building including relocating specific functions, allowing for better operational and process flow, upgrading spaces to maximize functional capacity, and renovations to meet established GMP requirements. Epstein is also improving the facility’s cultivation capacity to increase production by converting flower rooms from single to double stack. On the production side, we are completing a full renovation, which involves converting the facility to an automated process with new equipment, such as Auto Cure units.

In manufacturing, Epstein is renovating both the kitchen and refinement areas and providing new equipment to accommodate existing and future lines of product. Epstein is also implementing significant upgrades to the HVAC, electrical, plumbing/fire protection, and building automation and life safety systems to support the renovation.

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Cannabis stock image

Green Thumb Industries
Oglesby, IL

Epstein provided MEP engineering services to Green Thumb Industries for an expansion to their Oglesby, Illinois cannabis cultivation facility. The expansion includes new office/welfare space, new packaging and production spaces and new agricultural cultivation spaces.

Our HVAC design included cultivation areas (flower, vegetation, mother and dry rooms) and provided dedicated semi-custom dehumidification AHUs for these rooms. Each cultivation room is served by two fully independent AHUs that work in tandem to achieve heating, cooling, and dehumidification and humidification demands of space for day (lights on) and night (lights off) mode. Each AHU is equipped with UV lights, MERV 14 filtration, and CO2 injection controls. All rooms included CO2 emergency purge exhaust fans and alarms, and all AHUs are located indoors on an equipment platform above rooms with a remote condensing on roof for ease of maintenance and enhanced longevity.

Epstein's engineers provided dedicated AHUs with VAV control in the processing and manufacturing areas for analytical lab, ethanol extraction, and post-processing areas. Processing and manufacturing spaces have dedicated AHU with heating, cooling, and dehumidification including economizer, UV lights and MERV 13 filtration.

Our engineers also provided DOAS units for ventilation with VRF multi-zone Heat Pump system for heating and cooling in miscellaneous and support areas. This system included MERV 13 filtration with heat recovery.

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OhiGrow rendering

OhiGrow Cultivation & Manufacturing Facility
Toledo, OH

Epstein is providing DesignBuild services for the expansion and renovation of the OhiGrow cultivation and manufacturing facility located in Toledo, Ohio. The space provides medical cannabis cultivation, processing and packaging capabilities.

The multi-phased expansion and renovation will expand the existing 10,000 square foot building to over 40,000 square feet, paving the way for a dramatic increase in output. The first phase will create a 16,000 square foot, single-story expansion. The new portion of the building is designed to support the addition of 15,000 square feet on a future second story. The expansion will be devoted to cultivation with 18,000 square feet of flower and vegetation rooms, each featuring 3-tier growing racks. The existing building will be renovated during the second phase to transform it into a dedicated processing and packaging facility capable of handling the increased cultivation output of the expanded facility.

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Autocure equipment

PaMS Medical Cultivation & Manufacturing Facility Expansion
Scranton, PA

Epstein is providing DesignBuild services for the expansion of the Pennsylvania Medical Solutions [PaMS] facility located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The medical cannabis facility includes cultivation, processing and packaging, manufacturing, analytical lab, tissue culture, husbandry, and employee welfare areas. The two-phased expansion will nearly double the square footage from roughly 90,000 square feet to more than 160,000 square feet. The majority of the approximately 70,000 square foot expansion is focused on increasing the facility’s canopy, or plant growing space, which will triple to about 98,000 square feet of canopy after completion.

The expansion will allow higher yield of product and significantly expand cultivation capacity and market share in Pennsylvania, a robust operating environment where cannabis products are in high demand.

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Manassas, VA rendering

Dalitso LLC
Manassas, VA

Epstein is providing DesignBuild services in a phased approach for the expansion of the Dalitso LLC cannabis cultivation facility located in Manassas, Virginia. The medical cannabis facility includes cultivation, processing and packaging, manufacturing, analytical lab, tissue culture, husbandry, and employee welfare areas. Manassas I is a 91,652 square foot facility where we are providing an interior build-out of approximately 68,000 square feet with a renovation of 14,000 square feet. Manassas I increases cultivation to approximately 25,000 square feet, processing to over 10,000 square feet, manufacturing to 17,800 square feet, welfare to 2,700 square feet, and office space to 5,500 square feet.

Manassas II will be constructed in two phases: Phase One, Manassas II East is an as-of-right expansion of 104,960 square feet designed to maximize the site FAR, increasing the facility to 196,612 square feet.

Phase Two: Manassas II West will add an additional 66,280 square feet, and is developed under a Proffer Amendment to increase the allowable FAR. Upon completion, Epstein will have increased the Manassas facility by approximately 240,000 square feet for a total facility gross area of 262,892 square feet, and a canopy increase from 5,300 square feet to 103,050 square feet.

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PIP stacked racks

NuLeaf Cultivation Facility
Sparks, NV

Epstein provided building assessment services for a 27,000 square foot, two-story cultivation facility with 6,800 square feet of canopy space.

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Courtesy of Precision Extraction Solutions

Want to learn more? Get in touch!

David Scott

Senior Vice President