A cannabis company is banking on the Michigan sun and the state’s cool air to power their ultra-engineered hybrid greenhouse in Marshall.

Inside a glass-walled building the size of three and a half football football fields, Michigan Pure Med plans to grow 50,000 plants starting this fall for the state’s medical marijuana industry.

The facility, which is being built this summer, has been engineered in a similar way to a data center that’s built to keep thousands of computer servers secure, cool and clean.

“A lot of people are growing indoors, but it’s highly cost-prohibitive and very wasteful,” said David Yostos, co-founder of Michigan Pure Med and a former data center construction manager for Microsoft. “You’re growing a plant indoors: it’s not natural and hard to scale.”

Michigan Pure Med has secured 30 class-C grow licenses for the 200,000-square-foot hybrid greenhouse that’s under construction now in Marshall and will be completed by the fall. If needed, additions could be added to the greenhouse to bring it up to 1.2 million square feet.

The company opened its first retail storefront -- Common Citizen -- in Flint this summer.

Michigan Pure Med is a trial run for what will eventually become a multi-state marijuana company.

The Michigan Pure Med team is made up of three businessmen from Michigan: Yostos, CEO Michael Elias and President Joe Jarvis, a professional civil engineer.

Headed by Elias -- who has a background as an industrial engineer in hospital management and lean practices -- the trio looks to bring their expertise to the cannabis industry to reduce their costs.

“It’s the most expensive startup in the history of mankind,” Elias said.

What will set Michigan Pure Med apart, the company hopes, is its greenhouse engineering. When weather allows, using natural sunlight -- supplemented by grow lights -- will help cut down on electricity costs, Elias said.

“It’s a data center with a glass roof,” Elias said. “It has the same level of environmental control but at a fraction of the cost because we use the sun.”

During most of the year, Michigan’s cool air will also help cool the building using data center systems technology, Yostos said.

Specially designed air handling units use outdoor air -- as long as it’s 72 degrees or cooler -- to cool down the interior air. Mechanically, the outdoor air never touches the indoor air, but it is used in the cooling process through a transfer wheel.

Though it may sound technical, Yostos said it greatly reduces energy costs for the company. It’s a system Yostos said he put into the data centers he built for Microsoft in order to cool the thousands of servers housed inside.

“It’s mission critical for the plant to maintain a certain level of humidity and a certain environment,” Yostos said. “So the engineering is the same, just the reason is different. You’re swapping computers for plants.”

Inside the glass-walled greenhouse will be 10 rooms, five on each side of a long hallway.

“Envision one long corridor down the middle,” Yostos said, describing the greenhouse’s interior, which stretches longer than a football field. “Glass is surrounding you everywhere. You can see everything.”

The company picked Marshall as the location for its first greenhouse partially due to Elias’ former career in hospital management consulting. He was working in Marshall when a potential cannabis investor called Elias to a meeting in Arizona. Elias left the meeting on a mission to get into the industry, and started asking around in Marshall.

“Geographically Marshall is ideal. It’s centrally located; you can reach 80 percent of Michigan in 1.5 hours,” Elias said.

The town of about 7,000 people has its own independent power plant, which Elias and his team liked.

Common Citizen opened its first retail shop in Flint in mid-June. The company plans to open up four more retail locations by the end of the year in Detroit, Battle Creek, Hazel Park and Lansing. At the site in Hazel Park, the company is planning a small, high-end craft grow operation and processing lab, as well as a retail store.

-- Amy Biolchini is the marijuana beat reporter for MLive. Contact her with questions, tips or comments at abiolch1@mlive.com. Read more from MLive about medical and recreational marijuana.