Construction underway for cannabis production facility

If you have driven on Ramon Road near Date Palm, odds are you’ve probably passed by the 500-square foot grow house.

Many residents have mixed feelings about this facility being built. The company and city officials say it will be a gamechanger to the valley’s pot industry.

“I really can’t wait for this to be up and operational,” said Duncan Gordon, COO of Sunniva, the company behind the grow house.

Canadian-based cannabis company Sunniva is opening their first project of this size in the US in Cathedral City.

“The feeling was that there were a lot of people dealing with illnesses, where cannabis could be very helpful to them. in terms of management of their medical issues,” said Shelley Kaplan, Cathedral City City Councilman.

A site at full production that’s expected to grow 50 million grams of pot per year, using green to grow green.

Using the power of the sun, with a Dutch-style in lieu greenhouse is one of them. It allows the sunlight into the plant, minimizing the utilization of lights and electricity and another key component of our facility is we’re going to do 100% re-circulation of water. So we will be putting zero wastewater down the drain system,” Gordon said.

The first phase of Gordon’s project, 325,000 square feet, expected to open in July. He says that will have special technology when it comes to odor control and security.

“365 cameras on site. 65 motion sensors around the perimeter fence and an excess of 60 devices internal to control which zones people are working in, and moving through,” Gordon said.

Gordon continued, “We’ll be using carbon filters, and pushing any air that’s extracted to the external environment through those carbon filters. Once it goes through the carbon filters, then that same air will move through a high-pressure odor-neutralizing line, and then vent it to the external atmosphere.”

It’s something Gordon and others hope they can reap for years to come.

“And make a real difference, we feel, and shift the benchmark in terms of cannabis cultivation in California,” Gordon said.

Gordon said another method they’ll use to control odor is placing no pressure to all areas of the building with doors or spaces that open towards outside.

Phase two of the project, an additional nearly 160,000 square feet of space, is expected to be complete sometime in the next one to two years.