Fitchburg cannabis firm fights odor issues as it seeks approval for renovation
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Revolutionary Clinics' Fitchburg cultivation facility
A Fitchburg-based cannabis cultivation is seeking to construct a new extraction lab to its facility, but lingering odor issues impacting neighbors near the site are creating complications with local officials.
“For the first five or six years you were open, no problems at all. And then there was like a three-year period where everything went to hell,” said Paul Fontaine, vice chair of the Fitchburg Planning Board, in a Tuesday meeting with Revolutionary Clinics representatives.
Speaking about the odor issues, Revolutionary Executive Vice President David Catanzano, who joined the company in November, according to his LinkedIn profile, pointed the blame at former management at the company, saying he would be more transparent than previous company executives and the previous odor mitigation plan submitted by the company was fundamentally flawed.
"I feel like I've been on an eight-month apology tour for anyone who has ever touched Revolutionary Clinics, because people who told you those things – you wouldn't know – but they weren't telling you the facts," Catanzano told the planning board, referencing the board’s discussions about odor with previous management.
Revolutionary Clinics appeared in front of the Fitchburg Planning Board on Tuesday to provide an update on the company’s plans to construct an extraction lab at the company’s facility at 1 Oak Hill Road. The company applied for a minor special permit modification in 2022, which would allow for the lab, but with approval for that permit modification set to expire at the end of September and construction yet to begin, Revolutionary notified the board it sought to obtain an extension.
Extraction labs are used by companies to turn cannabis flowers into products like oil or concentrate, which can be consumed via smoking or vaporization, or be used to make edible products.
After alerting the company it would need to formally request an extension by filing the appropriate paperwork, Fitchburg Planning Board Chair Paula Caron said Revolutionary has frequently appeared on the body’s agenda, as the City has received a number of complaints from local residents regarding odors of cannabis around the facility.
“We’re glad to see you here this evening to help see how to address any of these outstanding issues,” Caron said to Revolutionary representatives in the Tuesday meeting. “Particularly in light of [the company] looking for an extension. We were relying on the applicant to come up with the [odor mitigation] plan. It was delay after delay in trying to that implemented, and that was quite frustrating.”
The company’s cultivation building is near a number of residences, including the adjacent Anwelt Heritage Apartments, an 86-unit senior living community.
Controlling odor at the facility was a requirement of the company’s permit and non-compliance should result in a fine of $300 per day, Caron said.
While noting there’s been a decrease in complaints in recent months, with two complaints so far in 2024, Fontaine said odor issues at the facility have stretched back years, with the problem drawing the attention of the Fitchburg Board of Health, mayor, and other elected officials.
Casting doubt on a previous plan which called for odor mitigation equipment to be installed on the roof of the building, Catanzano said the company would submit a new plan calling for an increase in the amount of air filters within the facility, which he said would allow odor to be dealt with before it escaped the building.
Other topics regarding the facility were discussed, including its employee headcount.
While Revolutionary had previously had some difficulties with the building’s parking lot being insufficient for the amount of employees at the facility, shifts in the Massachusetts cannabis market have led the company to decrease its headcount at the facility by approximately a hundred workers in recent years, rendering parking issues moot for the foreseeable future, said Catanzano.
Revolutionary laid off 10% of its workforce and temporarily halted cultivation operations at the site due to a bacterial outbreak amongst the company’s cannabis plants in early 2023, according to reporting from NBC Boston.
The company reported 213 local employees and 313 employees across Massachusetts as of the second quarter, according to statistics provided to the WBJ Research Department, making the company the largest cannabis business in Central Massachusetts.
The company did not respond to a WBJ request for comment seeking more details on the company’s extraction lab plans, the odor issues, or the layoffs.
Revolutionary has been approved by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission to cultivate up to 70,000 square feet, according to state documents. However, the company is only using 37,000 square feet of their allotted canopy space, said Catanzano.
In addition to the company’s Fitchburg cultivation, Rev Clinics operates dispensaries in Leominster, Cambridge, and Somerville. A dispensary operated by the company in Cambridge closed in May, following a lawsuit over missed rent payments.
Revolutionary received a $120,000 fine in August 2020, after state regulators found the company sold vaporizer cartridges that exceeded allowed state limits for ethanol. The company blamed that issue on lingering cleaning agents left in the company’s extraction equipment.
The company is the Massachusetts manufacturer of Papi Cannabis products, a brand launched by former Red Sox slugger David Ortiz in the summer of 2022.
Eric Casey is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.
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