John Schroyer
Colorado cannabis company Terrapin Care Station decided to reverse course on a previously announced production facility in the town of Auburn, New York, which a company spokesman said was due to delays in getting the broader market operational.
Terrapin Care Station is a second-tier multistate operator, with a footprint in Michigan, Missouri, and Pennsylvania in addition to its home state of Colorado, according to the company website.
Terrapin signed a real estate deal to buy land for a manufacturing facility in Auburn in 2021, but the deal never closed because the company waited to see how the recreational market rollout would go. The results have not been encouraging to Terrapin officials, Auburnpub.com reported.
“We have watched implementation of the program crippled by painful delays and lawsuits. Ultimately, cannabis retail has not launched adequately to justify entering the market with a production facility at this time,” Terrapin’s vice president of communications, Peter Marcus, wrote to Auburnpub.com.
Marcus said that the original plan – a $20 million manufacturing plant in Auburn that would have created 100 jobs – may still come to fruition at some point in the future, and local officials have been “incredible to work with.”
Terrapin informed city officials, from whom the company had planned to purchase real estate for its facility, last week.
One city councilor said the news was “indicative of the dysfunction in Albany” regarding the recreational cannabis market rollout.
As of May 1, there are only nine operational recreational retailers in the state of New York, despite 165 conditional adult use retail dispensary (CAURD) permits having been awarded. A lawsuit from a Michigan cannabis entrepreneur has stalled all retail licensing in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
