There is a road. It may just be base layer rock at this point but, to me, it’s beautiful. I’m already knee deep in March and all the imagining and designing I’ve done is still just a fantasy, except for the road, the road is real. All other construction will need to use this road so it’s possibly the least interesting of the projects, yet most important.
At this point I feel like Harold and the Purple Crayon. I look out my kitchen window onto the pasture below and I can draw with my imagination where everything will be placed: the building, the garden beds, the greenhouse, the security building, the fence. I draw myself with my future employees laying trellis over the plants, pruning in July, harvesting in October. It’s a rough sketch and no one can see it but me at this point. Well, that’s not entirely true. The planning department is holding onto a pretty detailed sketch of the buildout plans while I wait for their approval.
If I can give any advice to anyone building on new property who has not jumped through the hoops before, jump high and often. Meaning, call your county planning office, call the building department, call DEQ, call water resources, call everyone you may possibly have to deal with ahead of time. If you don’t know who you have to deal with, call county planning and ask. Ask questions, good ones and bad ones. Ask the same questions to each department because they sometimes don’t communicate or have different answers. Sometimes you’ll have to jump through the same hoop twice with different departments and sometimes you’ll have to jump through two different hoops at the same time.
Prepare all the information you can ahead of time: draw your site plan design to scale, know your building materials, and determine the amount of electricity you’ll need. If you need help with this, find a good builder and electrician. If you’re one of the few lucky ones whose property is in a flood zone, get yourself an engineer, you’re going to need one.
All of this can most definitely be frustrating at times, but learning the process makes me thankful that some process exists. While the wild and free part of me wants to build as I desire, I am aware that building a full-scale cannabis production facility creates an impact on the environment, and with the rush of folks coming to build here, without any guidance or mild restrictions, we could all slowly diminish and destroy a large part of our beautiful countryside. So I take a deep breath, I make my phone calls and I jump through the hoops.
Most importantly, throughout the buildout process, be kind and patient. All the people down at county planning, the building department, or at the power company are new to this industry. Their learning curve is steep and many counties that haven’t seen building or growth in their area for many years are now flooded with site plan applications. A gentlemen at the building department said to me yesterday: “I promise you, we are not here to stand in your way, we are here to help you find solutions so you can build how you need to.” I believe him and am glad I live in a place where all these departments are on board with legalization and are doing the best they can to help the industry flourish.