Odor Smell Delays Berkshire Roots Expansion
Concerns about the odor that some neighbors say comes from the existing Berkshire Roots cannabis facility on Dalton Avenue delayed the company’s quest to significantly expand cultivation.
The Berkshire Eagle reports that Berkshire Roots is seeking to build a 100,000-square-foot facility at the site of the former Ken’s Bowl.
Project engineer Frank DeMarinis outlined the company’s plans for preventing odor from escaping its proposed facility.
While grow rooms would be sealed, air exhausted from bathrooms would be discharged outside the facility, but not before being treated via a multi-step process."
Treatment involves sending the exhaust through an underground sand filtration system, several carbon filters and the use of “odor neutralizing mist diffusers.”
Which DeMarinis described as,
“pretty much Febreze” sprayed before the air is discharged outside."
Berkshire Roots is seeking to build a 100,000-square-foot facility at the site of the former Ken’s Bowl. It would be a two-story building primarily serving as a cannabis cultivation and manufacturing space and would create at least 80 full-time jobs, according to co-founder Andrea F. Nuciforo Jr. the existing dispensary, grow and processing facility employs 78 people.
The three-story building for cultivation that remains under construction is expected to add an additional 25 full-time positions to the company’s payroll. The proposed third structure would add around an additional 80 full-time workers, .
Nuciforo said.
“What we are attempting to do here is build a cannabis campus,” It will be, from what we can tell, unique for the East Coast.”
Treatment involves sending the exhaust through an underground sand filtration system, several carbon filters and the use of “odor neutralizing mist diffusers,” which DeMarinis described as “pretty much Febreze” sprayed before the air is discharged outside.
DeMarinis told the board members that concerns about odor from its existing dispensary, cultivation and processing facility at 501 Dalton Ave. did not surface until Berkshire Roots submitted its proposal for the new facility over the summer.
Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi urged the ZBA to hold off on approving the cannabis company’s request until the smell he said constituents, and he himself, have noticed coming from the existing facility is brought under control.
The company reached a purchase-and-sale agreement for the Ken’s Bowl property, according to City Planner Cornelius Hoss, with the deal contingent on the company receiving project approval.