The long-vacant former roof tile plant in Sanderson has been purchased for $3.85 million by a Manhattan-based medical marijuana cultivation, processing and dispensing company called Acreage Holdings.

The publicly-traded company on the Canadian Stock Exchange was founded in 2014 as High Street Capital Partners, which rebranded as Acreage Holdings in 2017, its website states. It describes Acreage's management team as "veterans from Wall Street and finance as well as major players in the retail and food & beverage industries, and legal fields."

Acreage's board of directors included former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, a former CFO at IBM and others.

It's CEO, Kevin Murphy, started in the cannabis industry in Maine in 2012.

He recently penned a piece for Forbes regarding the growth in cannabis industry jobs. The article was published online May 20, 10 days before the Sanderson plant sale. It said jobs in the cannabis industry grew 44 percent in 2018 and Florida and California were expected to add 20,000 more jobs this year.

"In 2018, as its medical marijuana industry ramped up, Florida added the most jobs of any state — more than 9000, equaling an eye-popping 703 percent increase, according to (industry website) Leafly," Mr. Murphy wrote.

His bio says Acreage Holdings is the largest vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis operator in the country.

High Street Capital grew its operations into Illinois and Maryland before expanding to California, Florida and New York in 2016, the company website shows.

High Street Capital merged with several other corporations in the cannabis industry to form Acreage Holdings and began acquiring cultivation facilities in Florida and elsewhere.

According to its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the end of 2018, Acreage planned to open 18 marijuana dispensaries this year in Florida.

"The company is seeking a development site for the location of a greenhouse and indoor cultivation facility," reads the 2018 SEC report. "The Florida license has no restrictions on canopy (the area of a cultivation facility actually used to grow cannabis) and management’s expectation is to develop a property with the capacity for several hundred thousand square feet of cultivation space."

The Sanderson plant has 109,186 square feet of manufacturing space and 4360 square feet of office space.

Acreage Holdings is a publicly traded company. It's stock price was $18.47 at midday today, up six-tenths of 1 percent. It had 75 marijuana dispensaries and licenses to grow and process cannabis at 21 facilities, all in 19 U.S. states where medical and/or recreational marijuana use is legal.

Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, however.

The Sanderson plant (pictured above in 2017) was nearly bought by an Ireland-based manufacturer of pre-fabricated walls, KD Wall Systems, but financing for the project fell through.

See next week's edition for more details.

Joel Addington