East St. Louis medical pot farm to be housed in former data center near ‘Stan Span’
The metro-east’s first medical marijuana farm is set to be housed in a vacant U.S. Cellular switching station just south of where Interstate 70 crosses the new Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge into St. Louis.
At 737 Locust Ave., the site covers 6.7 acres at the end of an unpaved road that stretches nearly half a mile from Illinois 3. The site, which is bounded by railroad tracks on the west and an entry ramp to I-70 under construction to the north, is heavily wooded and home to local wildlife, including turkeys.
An 8-foot-high chain-link fence, crowned by double-stranded razor wire, encloses the 20,000-square-foot building. An electrically-operated gate controls access to the vacant building, which at night is illuminated by powerful, elevated flood lights.
Progressive Treatment Solutions, which holds the state license to grow medical marijuana in the five-county district that includes St. Clair and Madison counties, acquired the property last month. It will likely begin the move into the building by the end of this month, according to Mayor Alvin Parks Jr.
A temporary restraining order granted by a Madison County judge in March had threatened to halt progress on the indoor cannabis farm. But with the order’s lifting Thursday, no legal impediments remain for Progressive Treatment to begin operations, according to Parks.
“I think it’s just fantastic news,” Parks said.
Parks praised Progressive Treatment’s choice of the building, saying its relatively remote location north of downtown in an industrial area and far away from churches, schools or busy city streets, helped ensure it would be highly secure.
“The fact they will be in a remote location I think for this kind of operation is a real plus — out of the way,” he said. “Nobody really has a need to come there, or even in that direction, unless they are coming to that facility to pick up product to take to one of the dispensaries, or to bring product that has to go into the manufacturing of the medical marijuana. ... There would be no real need to come there or in that direction unless they’re coming to that facility.”
Deletra Hudson, the city manager, agreed with Parks that security will be a major focus for the cannabis facility.
“We’ll make sure that, as with most economic development projects, we’re definitely including the component of public safety,” Hudson said. “But the developers of the project have certain public safety guidelines they will have to meet as well. And we will ensure that together that the safety concerns are definitely met.”
In the weeks since the Illinois Department of Agriculture, under the state’s pilot medical cannabis program, awarded a cultivation license to Progressive Treatment Solutions, Parks and other city officials repeatedly declined to identify the facility’s proposed location — a decision made out of concern for site security and because Progressive had not yet finalized the purchase of the site.
But with the property’s recent sale, Parks said he could speak more freely about the location and the benefits the cannabis farm will bring to the city, including dozens of new jobs and revenue.
East St. Louis residents with questions about the Progressive Treatment cannabis operation will get the chance to pose them to the Chicago-area firm’s representatives during a meeting of the city’s planning commission set for 6 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall, 301 River Park Ave.
The commission is set to amend the city zoning code to include medical marijuana facilities as conforming to regulations. It then falls upon the City Council, as part of a deal to lift an earlier temporary restraining order, to declare during a regular meeting set for April 23 that the cannabis facility complies with city zoning regulations.
Only a few people live in the area around the former fiber-optic switching facility. Dorinda Hollins, who lives in a duplex off Illinois 3, about a half-mile southeast of the facility, said she favored the prospect of a medical marijuana farm coming to her neighborhood.
“It’s a good thing with the jobs,” Hollins said. “I know I can’t kick against it.”
The new home for Progressive Treatment’s cannabis farm was built in 2000 at a cost of $4.5 million by a now-defunct Canadian telecommunications company called 360networks. Employing 10 people by early 2001, the facility was known as a Point-of-Presence, or POP, facility, which routed data traffic on a network using switching equipment.
When it became operational, the East St. Louis POP helped ensure that fiber-optic signals for telephone and Internet providers moved smoothly between Chicago and New Orleans. The East St. Louis POP was to become part of a network of 100 such facilities that 360networks had planned to build across North America. The Vancouver, British Columbia, company had plans to install about 88,000 miles of fiber-optic line worldwide in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
But in 2002, a brutal recession hit the telecommunications industry, and 360networks, like many of its industry competitors, filed for bankruptcy — the result of heavy debts, an oversupply of fiber-optic bandwith and too little demand.
In 2003, U.S. Cellular bought the building for $1.3 million — or less than one-fourth the cost of constructing the building. As recently as 2013, U.S. Cellular, through a subsidiary called Florida RSA 8 LLC, paid $57,151 in property taxes to St. Clair County, which has set its fair market value at nearly $1 million, county records show.
Parks, who lost his bid for a third term as city mayor in the election Tuesday, praised Progressive Treatment’s level of preparation, which will help protect it from its adversaries and ensure “they are not going to fall prey to the sabotage efforts,” he said. “I think this is something that moves forward and the entire state of Illinois and, in particular, the city of East St. Louis will benefit from for generations to come.”
This story was originally published April 11, 2015 at 10:01 AM with the headline "East St. Louis medical pot farm to be housed in former data center near ‘Stan Span’."