Last week it was Planet 13 in Vegas looking to hire new workers for outlets in Las Vegas & Los Angeles.
This week on the east coast….
A former Cambria Iron Co. machine shop has been sold for $1 million to the company that recast the site into a medical marijuana growing facility in 2020.
It’s part of a move that will enable Hanging Gardens LLC to fill 200 full-time jobs, Hanging Gardens Chief Financial Officer Shane Kenney said.
“Hanging Gardens considers itself fortunate to have found Johnstown, particularly with the support of the community and the Johnstown Redevelopment Authority,” he said Tuesday.
Kenney described the move as a commitment to the community and the products Hanging Gardens develops inside an “emblem of the Industrial Age reborn to offer life-changing medicine for generations to come.”
Johnstown Redevelopment Authority Director Melissa Komar confirmed the Johnstown-based nonprofit closed on the deal.
In doing so, the authority transferred rights to the 34,000-square-foot former machine shop and less than a half-acre of surrounding property alongside Iron Street.
Kenney told The Tribune-Democrat that the company is already seeking to fill a number of those jobs – and a web search showed nearly 20 positions were already posted through LinkedIn, Indeed.com and other sites seeking a harvester, lab technicians and sales staff, among others.
A job was also posted this week for an in-house construction manager to oversee ongoing expansion efforts within the multi-story brick building.
The company is just one of two dozen state-licensed medical cannabis growers and processors in Pennsylvania.
For nearly a year, Hanging Gardens has been supplying products derived from the plant, such as tinctures, topical lotions and capsules, to state-regulated dispensaries statewide.
After first agreeing to a five-year lease with the Redevelopment Authority in 2018, the company spent 18 months transforming the industrial site into sterile labs, storage areas and growing spaces.
The sale will also put the state-of the-art growing and processing facility back into taxation, meaning it will bring in annual revenue for the city, school district and county.
Komar said county assessment officials will have to determine the annual tax amount for the property, which was tax-free under nonprofit ownership for nearly two decades and empty for even longer.
