PharmaCann Inc., one of the largest privately held cannabis companies in the U.S., will close its Denver cultivation and processing facility on May 20, laying off 132 workers as the company works toward exiting Colorado’s marketplace.
The nearly 190,000-square-foot facility on National Western Drive had a roughly $6 million taxable value in 2024, according to public records. PharmaCann is one of approximately 470 licensed adult-use cannabis cultivators in the state, down significantly from the 817 licensees in mid-2022, according to the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division.
Nathan Fete, the company’s chief manufacturing officer, informed the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on March 20 of the mass layoffs in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter.
“The entire facility will close on May 20, 2026. This action is expected to be permanent,” Fete wrote. “There are no bumping rights for the affected employees. The affected employees at the facility are not represented by a union.”
PharmaCann’s WARN letter comes three months after the company entered an agreement in December to sell its 17 Colorado dispensaries to Vireo Growth Inc. for $49 million.
PharmaCann entered Colorado in February 2022, when the company acquired LivWell Holdings Inc. Although the privately held multistate cannabis operators did not disclose the terms of that deal, the merger unfolded at the height of a pandemic-related boom for the cannabis industry. Some industry onlookers estimated that the deal, which also included LivWell’s Michigan assets, was valued between $100 million and $300 million.
When PharmaCann first entered into its merger agreement with LivWell in late 2021, Corado was closing out a record year with more than $2.2 billion in dispensary sales, according to the state’s Department of Revenue. But sales figures have plummeted 41% since, to $1.3 billion in 2025.
When the 2022 deal closed, PharmaCann CEO Brett Novey said, “Combining our respective companies creates a market-leading platform to further expand our operations in new and existing markets, and immediately expands PharmaCann’s presence to Colorado and Michigan, two of the largest cannabis markets in the country.”
The merger increased PharmaCann’s footprint to more than 50 dispensaries and 10 cultivation and production facilities across eight states.
Four years later, Colorado dispensary prices for dried flower are at an all-time low of $3.12 per gram on average, or roughly $88.50 per ounce. Meanwhile, the average wholesale price for 1 pound of bud is $607, down 65% from a market peak of $1,721 per pound in early 2021, according to the Department of Revenue.
PharmaCann’s decision to close its Colorado cultivation and production facility comes after the company resolved its pending litigation with Innovative Industrial Properties (IIP), a real estate investment trust, related to its lease defaults in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to IIP. The settlement includes monetary judgments, and it mandates PharmaCann to turn over properties in those states by late May.
PharmaCanna also previously leased cultivation assets from IIP in three other markets, including a 205,000-square-foot property in Michigan, a 58,000-square-foot property in Massachusetts and a 66,000-square-foot property in Illinois. IIP has executed lease agreements with new tenants for those properties.
