WASHINGTON – A medical-marijuana growing company licensed in three states is looking to expand to Maryland.
Harvest Inc. plans to apply for one of the 15 marijuana cultivation license that will be awarded later this year, and CEO Steve White recently told Washington County and Hancock officials that the small rural town near the Pennsylvania border is where he’d like to open up, the Herald-Mail reports.
Representatives from the company will be at a town hall meeting Thursday night at 7, the Herald-Mail says.
“It is a new area for our state, and we know there’s a lot of concern and confusion, so we’re trying to get ahead of that,” Hancock Mayor Dan Murphy said.
White says the company will detail its plans and take comments “from everybody who wants to give them.”
“We believe that this should be a very open process, and one that the community should be involved with.”
The company says it’s looking to operate out of the former Fleetwood building, and that it would invest more than $11 million in renovations, as well as creating about 125 jobs.
Harvest Inc. operates in Arizona, Nevada and has a license in Illinois, though it hasn’t begun operating there yet. It’s only applying for a cultivation license, not a dispensary license, in Hancock, though it has such licenses in other states.
As far as expanding to Maryland goes, White says, the company is determined to open in Hancock “or not at all.”
White adds that he’s already had preliminary meetings with Hancock police regarding security at the facility, which include barbed wire fences, guards and cameras. He says, however, that in 2 1/2 years in business the company hasn’t had any incidents, adding that in the business, the major security threat comes from inside jobs.
Murphy called the prospective jobs “a lifesaver” for Hancock.
“We’re going to work as hard as we can and make sure the citizens of Hancock understand it’s not really a threat; it could be blessing for us,” Murphy says.
