Hartford Business Journal

16 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | APRIL 21, 2025 Fine Fettle leaders Erik Bjornson, director of facility operations and production, and Kennard Ray, CEO of social equity licenses, at the company's new 46,000-square-foot Bloomfield cultivation facility. HBJ PHOTO | HARRIET JONES Market Disruption Slow rollout of CT's newest cannabis cultivation facility reflects industry's growing pains Complex rules Attorney Sarah Westby, chair of law firm Shipman & Goodwin's cannabis team, said the market has been "struggling on a lot of fronts." "There were far fewer cultivators who actually got up and running than were approved for licenses," she said. Of the 27 license approvals, only two companies have so far proceeded to final licenses, with a handful still in the process, she said. For many of the others, either they don't have the funds to build out a costly facility, or they don't see the benefit in terms of return on invest- ment in Connecticut, Westby said. "A lot of people thought the market would grow much more quickly than it did," she said. "A lot of markets that transition from medical to adult use see a three or four times multiplier on the sales, and Connecticut has just not seen those kind of numbers." Locating businesses has also proved difficult, especially when individual towns have a lot of leeway to refuse zoning permission to cannabis companies. "The lack of suitable real estate for cultivation in particular has been a real challenge," Westby said. "I know businesses who have the financing, have the operational know-how, but just cannot find a place for their cultivation business." On the cultivation front, Pullman & Comley attorney Andrew Glassman said Connecticut essentially has the opposite problem of its northern neighbor Massachusetts, where growing operations built out so quickly that the state ended up with an oversupply and prices By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com I t's no secret that Connecticut's adult-use marijuana industry has had a bumpy rollout since its launch two years ago. A recent tour of Fine Fettle's new cannabis cultivation facility in Bloom- field revealed a few of the on-the- ground effects of that difficult start. "We have three more of these rooms right now that have just been sitting like this since December," said Erik Bjornson, Fine Fettle's director of facility operations and produc- tion, looking around a fully equipped but empty growing room during a late-March visit. "We thought we'd be fully open already," said Kennard Ray, Fine Fettle's CEO of social equity licenses. This 46,000-square-foot, new-build facility represents a $30 million investment for the company, which also has separate operations in Massachusetts and Georgia. It's one of the first full-size cultiva- tion facilities in Connecticut to be built under a social equity partnership, and sited in what the law deems to be a disproportionately impacted area — a part of the state where people were hard hit by the war on drugs. "We've got decades combined of experience building out these facilities," said Bjornson, who has been working in the cannabis industry for some 15 years and had experience in Michigan and Massachusetts before he came to Connecticut. "Working in this town, in this state, it has been confusing exactly what we need to change and be compliant with building codes." Time is money Fine Fettle began building here in late 2022, and got the initial certifi- cate of occupancy for some of the rooms within the facility late in 2024, after extensive inspections from the Department of Consumer Protec- tion, which regulates the cannabis industry. But then it ran into diffi- culties, with the town of Bloomfield asking for more documentation about some of the growing equipment and lighting, and referring the business for yet another state inspection. Among the parts of the facility that were put on hold were the central "mother room" where the growing stock is started, and three of the six "flower rooms" where plants are brought to maturity. Both Bjornson and Ray said all the agencies at the town and state levels have been helpful, but overall it's been a confusing process for both the officials and company. And in the interim, time is money. One growing cycle takes eight to nine weeks, and the facility had to start off at half-capacity. Fine Fettle is currently employing 13 people in Bloomfield. It hopes that by June it will grow to around 24 positions, and it has plans to continue hiring from there. "By not having access to that mom room and those bed rooms, we're really cutting into our potential for actual flower to be put out into the marketplace," Bjornson said. A recent shift by the Department of Consumer Protection has put oversight and enforcement of the marijuana industry under a new leader — DCP attorney Lila McKinley — and a newly formed division within the agency. Ray says he welcomes that change because it will provide better linkages to make sure the process runs more smoothly in the future. "Overall, they've been working hard to get stuff right for us," he said. Kaitlyn Krasselt, a spokesperson for DCP, acknowledged the state's cannabis industry is complicated and has a lot of requirements. She said the creation of the new division will allow for more specialized focus on the industry. "It may make things faster just because they are focused fully on cannabis, all the way up to the leader- ship of that division," she said. Sarah A. Westby

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