Jai Agnish, North Jersey Record

2018

Ken VandeVrede, of Gro-Rite Garden Center & Florist and CEO of Hillview Med in Pequannock discusses applying for license to farm medical marijuana. Jai Agnish, Staff Writer, @jaiagnish

Fifty years ago the VanderVrede family delivered tomatoes from the farm in Pequannock to customers in Paterson. If the state allows, the family may soon replace the tomatoes with medical marijuana.

Gro-Rite Garden Center & Florist has applied for one of six available state licenses to grow medical marijuana on its 150 acres of farmland in Pequannock and Belvidere under the name Hillview Med. 

"It's very competitive," said Ken VandeVrede, the CEO of Hillview Med in Pequannock.

The farming family is among 147 statewide applicants, 49 in North Jersey, including Evergreen Cultivation in West Milford, who want to cultivate, process, and sell medical marijuana. Two licenses will be awarded in North Jersey, two in Central Jersey and two in South Jersey. There are currently six active state licences in circulation.

The family sees the connection to Paterson as a natural one, VanderVrede said, after all that is where his grandfather started off delivering his tomatoes in the early days of the business after immigrating from Holland.

The New Jersey Board of Health is expected to announce which applicants will receive a license on Nov. 1. 

"It would be absolutely amazing," VanderVrede said of landing one of the coveted licenses. "For us to get in on the ground floor of the medical cannabis market in New Jersey would be amazing."

Why medical marijuana?

The Hillview Med proposal results from Gov. Phil Murphy’s early-summer move to double the state’s marijuana providers to meet growing demand. With more than 28,000 registered patients by early July, the state program is on track to double its numbers in 2018, state records show.

"We consider this as the next evolving space in the  agriculture space," VandeVrede said.

Hillview Med is also trying to be ready if recreational marijuana is legalized in the state, VanderVrede said. A bill to create a legal marijuana marketplace in New Jersey is nearly complete.

Based on what's happened in other states, medical marijuana growers will likely be grandfathered in and have a foot in the door to grow legal recreational marijuana, VandeVrede said.

The distinction between medicinal versus recreational use marijuana is determined at the consumer end, VanderVrede explained. It's just taxed differently.

"We feel we have a very, very strong application," VandeVrede said.

The move from growing mums to marijuana could be made in seven months, he said.

Gro-Rite ships hundreds of thousands of plants and flowers on a weekly basis to supermarkets including ShopRite, Whole foods, and others in a number of states including Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Among the products are hydroponic basil, which is grown in state-of-the-art greenhouses. The company has 750,000 square feet of greenhouse space on the two farms and is permitted to build  2.2 million square feet more. That's the equivalent of 13 football fields with the potential for 38 more, he said.

"We can expand quickly," VandeVrede said. 

The other plus, the CEO said, is the farm can get an affordable product to market. 

Hillview Med can produce a pound of marijuana for under $400, VanderVrete said on Thursday. He said applicants who plan to open a warehouse and use electricity will find it difficult to get below $1,000 a pound.

"The lowest cost producers are the ones with high-tech greenhouses," he said. 

These are computer- and sensor-based systems to control temperature, humidity, and water metrics. Also, the use of a sealed, closed-loop temperature system avoids having to vent out stinky marijuana odors during production. 

"I don't have many neighbors but I wouldn't even want to go there," VandeVrede said.

In addition to sustainably cultivated agriculture products, Gro-Rite's food and herb lines are certified organic. This approach would carry over to marijuana even though VanderVrede said certified organic cannabis is not a thing yet. 

"We know how to grow food at the highest level that there is, so for us to move into the cannabis  space, this is automatic production that we do already," he said.

It's a vertical integration license meaning Hillview Med would grow the plant, extract it into oils, edibles, pills, vapes, and distribute products to dispensaries. 

Why the Paterson market?

Hillview Med chose Paterson for several reasons, one being the family's history of delivering produce to the "Silk City" going back 50 years. More recently Gro-Rite has provided fresh produce to food banks there and has forged relationships with community groups. He said the company would hire Paterson residents to work in the dispensary.

"We've done a lot of exciting stuff in Paterson," he said.

Another reason is the diversity of the city's population. Having a marijuana dispensary in an urban city helps fulfill the licensing goal to promote inclusivity with minorities, VandeVrede said. 

Gro-Rite's expansion into the cannabis market would be a remarkable change for the family, said VandeVrede during a recent tour of the farm. He reminisced about when he worked on the Pequannock farm as a child. His father was in charge then and he expanded to farm into Belvidere. 

VandeVrede, a non-active private pilot, said it would be fun to one day fly a helicopter from nearby Lincoln Park Airport to the grass strip at the Belvidere farm. Such a costly flight may not  be so out of reach if his company secures one of the lucrative medical marijuana farming licenses.

Staff writer David M. Zimmer contributed to this article.

Follow Jai Agnish on Twitter: @JaiAgnish. Email: agnish@northjersey.com.