Future of cannabis coming to Vaudreuil-Dorion

A long-vacant 12-storey office tower in Vaudreuil-Dorion will soon be home to a cornucopia of cannabis companies.

The 70-acre campus known to many locals as the Future Building will soon be home to cannabis growers and producers of oils, sprays, pills, dried bud and edibles, as well as research labs, warehouses, and specialists in cannabis marketing, law and more.

CEO Jon Morrison said the ambitious project, dubbed C3, will be a world-leading cannabis business accelerator, which he likened to a “Silicon Valley” for startups in the legal weed business.

“We wanted the entire cannabis ecosystem to live here,” he said. “Everything you need to succeed is here.”

Morrison said the building, which was built in the early 1970s, was originally designed for pharmaceutical production, making it ideal for the needs of cannabis growers, producers and researchers.

The campus includes 90,000 square feet of secure warehouse space, a network of underground bunkers and tunnels designed to link labs and manufacturing facilities, a full security perimeter with gated entry, a four-storey, 10,000-square-foot lab facility for research and testing, a five-storey, 12,000-square-foot area for craft growing, along with meeting rooms, office space, a cafeteria and a 158-seat auditorium.

Morrison said he is aiming to attract around 30 cannabis startups in extraction, cultivation and processing to the Vaudreuil-Dorion facility, and is already in discussion with about a dozen companies interested in becoming C3 partners.

Extensive renovations are now underway to update the building, which has been mostly vacant for about 25 years and cannabis production is expected to begin as early as July. The existing buildings can accommodate up to 1,000 workers, Morrison said, but if C3’s gambit succeeds, there’s room to grow by building additional facilities on site.

C3 has also partnered with McGill University, making lab and office space available to McGill researchers, who are expected to begin using the space in the fall.

Anja Geitmann, dean of McGill’s Agricultural and Environmental Sciences department, said the university has similar partnerships with other industry partners, but noted that as a business incubator with a variety of cannabis companies clustered within a single site, C3 is unique.

Geitmann said that specific research activities have not yet been identified but could include things like studying the influence of environmental factors on plant chemistry, plant-microbe interaction or the extraction of active compounds to use in formulations for medical purposes.

Morrison said startups in the highly regulated cannabis industry face a number of hurdles that make it difficult for entrepreneurs to launch. In C3, Morrison hopes to help small businesses overcome two of the biggest barriers to entry: finding a suitable location with the correct zoning and city permits, and obtaining the licenses needed to grow or produce cannabis products.

By also providing small cannabis companies with access to shared services, as well as a new network of potential partners, Morrison said he hopes to make it faster, easier and cheaper to bring their products to market. C3 also aids companies to find financing to launch and grow their businesses, he said, and may also act as an investment partner.

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