About a year and a half after its opening, a local cannabis grow facility plans to add more rooms and its owner is looking at the possible addition of new businesses.

Globe Cannabis Company owner Mike Wingersky said business was picking up with the legalization of recreational marijuana in last November’s election. The facility, located in the former bowling alley near Holiday Inn Express on Ash Street, currently grows only medical marijuana – but that could be changing.

“One of the opportunities on the table right now is an adult use permit,” said Globe Cannabis Company general manager Rachel McClure, who started with the firm in 2020. “We’d love to be a part of that process and have the opportunity to bring more jobs to Globe, as well as adding sales taxes. Because we’re wholesale, there’s not a tax base other than the property tax being generated.”

McClure, who has been in the cannabis industry since 2014, said two drafts of the Arizona Department of Health and Human Services rules for recreational marijuana use have been issued. “It currently looks like we can grow for adult use and medical use concurrently, with no distinction. It’s up to dispensaries to decide how they will allocate it.”

The company now has 24 full-time and three part-time employees working in plant cultivation and post-harvest, which includes packaging, and McClure said all but five of those workers are local.

Wingersky said the company grows 100 percent organic marijuana, using no chemicals, and sells wholesale to dispensaries around Arizona. On the same day he spoke with the Silver Belt, they made deliveries to Kingman and Lake Havasu City.

After redoing the old bowling alley, the company opened for business in July 2019. The 26,000-square-foot facility has one vegetative room, where marijuana plants grow to maturity, and three flowering rooms. Wingersky said they plan to add two rooms, one of each type, converting the current vegetative room into a flowering room.

McClure said the company will also be getting its edibles kitchen up to speed and hopes to start ramping up the testing process within the next six weeks. One of the challenges in getting a kitchen rolling is that they must ensure they have fully shelf-stable products; testing can take from four to six weeks.

Wingersky said the company was adding a $307,000 air filtration system to enhance its ability to reduce marijuana odors escaping the building. “We don’t let any smell of marijuana outside the building,” he said. “We’ll have four different systems working together to make the facility ‘smell-proof’ to the outside.”

“It’s been a pleasure becoming part of the community,” said McClure.

Wingersky is also considering buying some land around the Holiday Inn Express, which the owner offered to sell him. He said he has asked the City of Globe if they would let him combine that land with his current property. If the city agrees, as part of the deal Wingersky will open three retail storefronts along that stretch of Highway 60. Wingersky said that, if things go through, he plans to open a coffee shop and smoking lounge, a hydro shop and a smoke shop. Nothing has been approved by the city at this point.