Ordinance committee approves Mass Cannabis Growers special permit for 1 Cabot Street with police letter condition

The Holyoke City Ordinance Committee approved a special permit for Mass Cannabis Growers Cooperative LLC to operate a permanent marijuana cultivation facility at 1 Cabot Street, voting to close the public hearing and approve the permit with a condition requiring a written police approval before the facility may begin operations.

The committee heard from Ezra Biersbach, who represented the applicant and walked members through updated materials, including a locational plan, a revised survey, room square-footage and internal elevations. "This was a tenant space at the 1 Cabot Street Building, which is, was formally occupied by a licensed operator named Milltown Agriculture," Biersbach said, explaining that the cooperative will take over the existing fit-out and that the only construction proposed is closing one interior doorway.

Committee members pressed for details about ownership and operations. Biersbach described the cooperative as having shrunk from an originally larger plan to under 2,000 square feet and said a primary investor would control roughly 75% (about 1,500 square feet) of the space, while other cooperative members would share the remainder. He said the facility would typically have no more than about five staff at any time and that post-harvest drying, storage, labeling and vaulting are confined to existing interior rooms.

Applicants also described security and backup power. Biersbach said the building has a shared storage battery providing four hours of camera backup and a diesel generator for longer outages and that building cameras are shared among tenants for chain-of-custody surveillance.

Police sign-off had been performed onsite but the committee was not provided a written approval letter from the police sergeant at the time of the hearing. Biersbach asked the committee to either vote without the letter or approve the permit subject to delivery of the police approval to the city clerk before operations begin. Committee members voted to close the public hearing, then to approve the permit with the police-approval-letter condition. The approval was voiced by the committee; no roll-call tally was recorded in the transcript.

The committee also agreed to add the seven standard special-permit conditions it applies to marijuana facilities (commercial property tax rate where required, local hiring targets for non-security positions, security-hiring preference language, prohibition on onsite consumption, operating hours in accordance with the ordinance, compliance with state Cannabis Control Commission and health rules, and a two-year substantial-progress requirement), and applied those conditions to this permit consistent with other recent approvals.

The permit’s effective operation is contingent on submission of the police approval letter and all applicable state permits and inspections. The committee did not authorize operation prior to receipt of the police letter.

Next steps: the clerk will receive the required police approval letter before the applicant may operate; the applicant anticipates licensing to begin in 2026 and still must complete state inspections and licensing steps.