The Bachman family has become a Minnesota legend for growing things.

And a family member is continuing that tradition in a new way — by growing marijuana.

Andrew Bachman and his partners have been chosen to build a marijuana facility in Cottage Grove and begin operations in July.

The state Department of Health announced Monday that out of 12 applicants, Bachman’s group, LeafLine Labs, and a business operating in Otsego were selected after a weekslong process.

Both companies are led by local physicians but will collaborate with organizations involved with medical marijuana in other states.

“I see this as an extension of what I do now, taking care of patients, except on a massive scale,” said Bachman, an emergency room doctor.

The other selection is Minnesota Medical Solutions, or MinnMed, a company working with Denver-based People’s Choice Medica, which offers consulting services to the marijuana industry in Colorado.

The medical marijuana facilities were legalized by the Legislature in May. About 5,000 Minnesotans are expected to qualify for the medical marijuana.

The companies will grow marijuana and then process it into pill or liquid form.They will sell the marijuana in distribution centers.

LeafLine plans to opens a distribution center in Eagan in July and others in St. Paul, St. Cloud and Hibbing in 2016. MinnMed plans centers in Minneapolis, Maple Grove, Rochester and Moorhead.

LeafLine Labs has no connections with Bachman’s family business — Bachman’s Floral Gift and Garden Centers.

Bachman is a great-great-grandson of Henry Bachman Sr., who founded the family company as a vegetable producer in the 1880s.

Including Bachman, 10 family members have invested in LeafLine, but he is the only one involved in managing the company.

Bachman said Monday that he has not gone into the family business of raising and selling flowers. “I am the black sheep of the family,” he said.

But nevertheless, his career has led him back to growing plants.

As an emergency room physician, he said, he spots public health trends early — including the medicinal potential of marijuana. “This appeared on our radar screen a long time ago,” he said.

He joined with another emergency room physician, Gary Starr. The LeafLine company includes executives of Theraplant, a Connecticut-based medical marijuana producer.

“We are singularly focused on producing high quality medicine and helping patients,” Bachman said.

The news was welcomed in Cottage Grove.

“I feel very good about it,” said Mayor Myron Bailey. “It’s a great opportunity for an expanding new business, and it will bring new jobs.”

In September, the city council gave tentative approval to the plan to build the plant in a city industrial park. The LeafLine building will be constructed at the southwest corner of Jamacia Avenue and 97th Street.

The first phase will be a 41,000-square-foot facility — about two-thirds the size of a typical Cub Foods store. It is expected to have about 35 employees.

But city administrator Ryan Schroeder said the company plans to more than double the size by 2016, and expand employment to 150 jobs.

“This is exciting,” he said.

Now, a seven-month sprint begins for the providers to get their growing facilities up and running, nail down distribution systems and register patients in time to deliver medication to Minnesotans starting July 1.

“There certainly is plenty of work ahead before we see medical cannabis products available in Minnesota,” Health Commissioner Ed Ehlinger said.

If the proposed distribution sites are opened, hundreds of miles would separate residents in northeastern and southwestern Minnesota from their medication. Half of the eight dispensaries would be in a 15-mile radius of the Twin Cities.

State officials and representatives from the two companies have acknowledged the struggle to ensure geographic balance in providing the medicine statewide.

LeafLine’s Starr said his company kept their dispensary site plans “fluid” to fill any emerging gaps as the program rolls out.

“The wild card in all of that is patient need,” said Manny Munson-Regala, an assistant commissioner in the Minnesota Department of Health and the architect of the state’s program.

“If you can tell me where the patients are, then I can tell you where we need to put distribution facilities. I suspect we’re all kind of guessing at this point.”

Officials from both organizations repeatedly emphasized their medical backgrounds in promising to provide safe and effective medication to Minnesotans.

And despite the short rollout timeline, they said they were confident they’d be ready to start providing medicine July 1.

“While that date often feels like it is rapidly approaching for us, we deeply appreciate that for many of Minnesota’s patients and their families, that date simply cannot come soon enough,” Bachman said.

MinnMed CEO Kyle Kingsley said his manufacturing plant in Otsego will start running sometime this week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433.

Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.