As Zephyr Partners begins the first phase of construction on its new cannabis campus in South Buffalo, the California firm is seeking to set up a career-training program at the Northland Corridor building occupied by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
California-based Zephyr – owned by Brad Termini, son of Buffalo developer Rocco Termini – is proposing to use the 16,000-square-foot building at 612 Northland Ave. for its job-skills programs that would teach potential hires how to work in the legalized cannabis industry.
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The proposed programs would be run in conjunction with the adjacent Northland Workforce Training Center, and would complement the expansive new $300 million cannabis cultivation and production facility that Zephyr is building at the Buffalo Lakeside Commerce Park. Zephyr, through its nonprofit foundation, is negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the workforce center to partner on the education efforts.
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Both the Northland campus and the South Buffalo business park off Fuhrmann Boulevard and Tifft Street are owned by the Buffalo Urban Development Corp., with whom Zephyr is negotiating a lease for the Northland building.
BUDC recently sold 80 acres at 310 Ship Canal Parkway to Zephyr, which started construction on the cannabis facility. That operation in turn will be leased for 30 years to Etain LLC, a medical cannabis license holder in New York, and an indirect subsidiary of Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. Planning for a second phase for Etain has already begun.
The new facility will feature greenhouse space for growing the plants as well as manufacturing facilities for extracting the oils and other elements from the plants in order to make and package cannabis-infused oils, balms, lotions and other products. The first two phases are expected to open by late 2023, with multiple buildings occupied by Etain, but Zephyr expects more development on-site for additional cannabis industry tenants.
The financial backing from a subsidiary of Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. will bring vast resources to the ambitious project, which was in limbo a year ago as the state moved slowly to legalize recreational cannabis.
But Zephyr, Etain and others still need employees to staff the operation – at least 54 within two years but many more to follow – and that requires training.
“This is a rapidly emerging and evolving industry that will require a trained workforce to fill jobs in this new market,” BUDC wrote in a memo to its board of director from President Brandye Merriweather and Executive Vice President Rebecca Gandour.
Zephyr is seeking a five-year lease with a monthly rent of $8,700 and an option to renew at fair market value for another five years. But that’s conditional on it first signing the memorandum of understanding with the Northland training center.
BUDC and its contractor, Mancuso Management, previously been marketing the 612 Northland building for a new tenant because the Albright-Knox, which closed its exhibition there last summer, will be vacating the space as of Nov. 30.
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SparkCharge, a 43North competition winner from 2018 that makes portable electric vehicle charging units, also submitted a proposal that was identical in terms to Zephyr’s, and it’s already a tenant at the Northland Central building at 683 Northland. The company needs much larger space to accommodate development of its new product.
BUDC staff opted for Zephyr because of what Merriweather and Gandour called “the strong synergy between Zephyr’s plan for cannabis workforce development” and the training center, and instead offered SparkCharge a six-month extension of its lease to give it more time to find other space.
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I’ve been a business reporter at The Buffalo News since 2004, now covering residential and commercial real estate and development amid WNY’s resurgence. I’m an upstate native, proud to call Buffalo my home, and committed to covering it thoroughly.
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