HOLYOKE — A seed-to-sale marijuana company based in Florida bought a 150-year-old mill building earlier this month for $3.2 million with plans to build a 126,000-square-foot growing, processing, testing and retailing operation there.

Trulieve Cannabis Corp., formerly Life Essence, has told the city it plans to create 200 to 300 jobs.

Its purchase of the building at 56 Canal St. and 7 North Bridge St. closed June 6.

The seller and current occupant is Francis J. Arnold, owner of Conklin Office Furniture. Arnold said he’s already started turning over portions of the mill building to Trulieve.

He’s moving his business to another building he owns nearby, the former Ampad factory at 75 Appleton St. He plans to be open there in September. Conklin Office Furniture will have a new showroom at 75 Appleton as well.

The Ampad building is better suited to his purposes of selling, storing and remanufacturing office furniture. Arnold said the Canal Street building has multiple levels and doesn’t accommodate forklifts easily.

"It is a beautiful old building here on Canal Street," he said. "I feel privileged to have been part of the ownership chain and to have owned it for nearly 20 years."

At one point, Arnold said he’d been talking with developers about converting at 56 Canal St. and 7 North Bridge St. into condominiums. But the project proved too complicated. Then he was approached by Life Essence about buying the building.

Conklin Office Furniture is a 29-year-old company with about 80 employees here and at offices in New York City and Philadelphia. It sells new and used office furniture and has office furniture manufactured for it in China for sale under its own brand name.

Arnold said one of the company’s businesses is liquidation, buying two or three floors of office furniture totaling 200 or 300 cubicles from a failing company, repairing it and then reselling it.

Arnold bought the Ampad building in 2009 for $1.7 million, according to city records. The paper company closed its Holyoke factory in 2005 after operating there since the 1888.

The building at 56 Canal St. was one of the first built to take advantage of the city’s power canals, Arnold said. For many years it was American Thread Co.

Trulieve bought Life Essence in November. It has plans for both medical marijuana dispensaries and recreational marijuana shops in Holyoke, Northampton and Cambridge, along with the growing and packaging operation in Holyoke.

Trulieve bills itself as the first and largest fully licensed medical cannabis company in Florida, with 29 dispensaries. Trulieve also has operations in California and Connecticut with The Healing Corner in Bristol, according to a news release.

In May, the Holyoke City Council granted a special permit to Trulieve, which still has applications pending at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. Commission records show the company has three applications pending for the three medical marijuana dispensaries.

06/24/2019 — HOLYOKE — Trulieve Cannabis Corp. bought the Conklin Office Furniture building, 56 Canal St., in Holyoke. Conklin will move to another building the company owns in Holyoke. (Don Treeger/ The Republican )

The legalized marijuana industry, and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’ embrace of it, have lead to a renewed interest in the city’s historic mill buildings.

High End Management Co., which wants to make marijuana-infused chocolate, bought the Eureka Ruling & Binding building, a hulking red brick mill at 110 Winter St. in the city’s industrial Flats neighborhood, for $299,000 in November 2018.

Trulieve is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol TRUL. Many marijuana companies are on the Canadian Stock Exchange because marijuana remains illegal under U.S. law dispute being legal under state laws here in Massachusetts and in other states.