One of the largest medical cannabis companies in Florida closed its two cultivation and processing facilities and laid off 211 workers this month in the Tampa Bay area.
Parallel Florida LLC, the corporate parent company of Surterra Wellness, which operates 44 dispensaries across the Sunshine State, filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the Florida Department of Commerce on July 21, notifying government officials of the company’s layoffs during a 14-day period that began on July 6.
Robin DeBaise, head of people and culture at Parallel, said that the company does not plan to reopen its facilities at 2324 W. Lake Drive in Wimauma and 3516 Hamilton Road in Lakeland. These two facilities comprise more than 330,000 square feet of operational greenhouse cultivation space, according to a September 2023 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
The 157 affected employees at the Wimauma facility include 43 production technicians and 27 cultivation technicians, according to the notice. The 54 impacted workers at the Lakeland facility include 22 cultivation technicians.
The workers don’t have union representation, DeBaise said.
“The affected employees will experience a permanent employment loss, and both facilities will be permanently closed,” DeBaise wrote in the notice. “Information about the [Florida] Rapid Response Program was provided to all affected employees along with their WARN notification materials to ensure they were aware of the assistance and reemployment resources available to them.”
William “Beau” Wrigley Jr., the billionaire heir of the Wrigley chewing gum brand, took over Surterra Wellness in 2018, before the company restructured under Parallel in 2019 and expanded beyond Florida, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Nevada and Texas. Wrigley invested nearly $200 million in Parallel, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported.
Some of Parallel’s new endeavors, such as those in Pennsylvania, didn’t last long. The company exited the commonwealth’s medical market in 2023 as it faced allegations of $5.8 million in unpaid rent and other fees.
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In March 2020, Innovative Industrial Properties Inc. (IIP), a real estate investment trust (REIT) in the cannabis space, acquired the Wimauma, Fla., facility from Parallel for $35.3 million and entered into a long-term lease agreement that allowed the company to continue its operations there.
At that time, the Wimauma facility comprised approximately 373,000 square feet of industrial and greenhouse space. Parallel was expected to complete additional tenant improvements for the property, for which IIP had agreed to provide up to $8.2 million in reimbursements.
“We are thrilled to partner with IIP on this transaction, which enables Parallel to unlock previously untapped sources of growth capital from our real estate holdings to help drive our continued expansion in Florida as well as in other markets,” Wrigley said at the time.
In September 2020, IIP also acquired the Lakeland, Fla., facility for $19.6 million under a similar long-term lease agreement with Parallel. The property consisted of roughly 65,000 square feet of industrial and greenhouse cultivation and production space at the time of the transaction. IIP agreed to fund Parallel’s 155,000-square-foot expansion project there for $36.8 million, for a total property investment of $56.4 million.
After Florida’s medical cannabis program expanded to flower sales in 2019, that latter IIP-Parallel deal came on the heels of the state’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use (OMMU) authorizing edible product sales to Florida’s then-410,000 qualified patients, as it became what many companies viewed as the most attractive limited-license medical market in the nation.
Nearly six years later, Florida’s medical cannabis market now includes more than 937,000 qualified patients actively registered in the program, according to OMMU.
In February 2021, Parallel announced a $1.9 billion merger agreement with Ceres Acquisition Corp. – a special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC) – to create a publicly traded wellbeing company; however, the companies mutually terminated the deal in September 2021, with Reuters reporting at the time that anonymous sources said “several investors had lost confidence in Parallel’s ability to deliver” on financial projections under the agreement.
In addition, Parallel had also entered a $100 million agreement in April 2021 to acquire Windy City Cannabis, a deal that included six dispensaries in Illinois, but that merger also failed.
In November 2021, Wrigley resigned as Parallel’s CEO.
In March 2022, investors sued Parallel in federal court, claiming Wrigley convinced them to invest in a simple agreement for future equity issued by Parallel in connection with the terminated Ceres merger under what they called a securities fraud scheme.
In July 2023, a federal judge allowed the investor lawsuit to move forward.
In June 2026, Law360 reported that Wrigley and a group of former Parallel executives reached a settlement to end the claims that he lied about share prices to lure their investments.
Following Wrigley’s 2021 resignation, Parallel began restructuring in September 2023, which included a foreclosure agreement for certain of the company’s operations in Florida, Massachusetts, Texas and Nevada that were pledged as collateral under its existing debt.
