Acquiring the address of the one marijuana growing facility registered fully with the Town of Camp Verde is relatively simple, involving only one call to the Community Development department.The nondescript industrial building sits a ways back from the road at 3755 Old Highway 279.
Getting answers from the facility itself is a trickier proposition. Camp Verde facility manager Craig Ingutti opened up about the coverage marijuana facilities had received in the media. He and his staff had held a meeting recently where the issue came up.
Ingutti insisted that the fears were understandable but unfounded. He said his facility is complying with all state laws and operating at maximum security. His staff is growing varieties for medical application but not for recreational use. Some varieties, he maintained, have negligible THC in them.
Ingutti initially consented to an interview and a tour, but later clarified that he would have to speak to his employer. No photos would be allowed. Repeated requests for an interview followed, but Ingutti did not return phone calls.
The property is owned by Camp Verde Management LLC, with a business address of P.O. BOX 1844 in Crested Butte, Colo. According to the Arizona Corporation Commission, Lee Olesen is the company’s principal.
Olesen is also general manager of the Olesen Family Limited Partnership, which deals with private equity investments, and the owner and principal at Pure Industries LLC, which does business under the name Soma Wellness. Soma operates two retail dispensaries in Colorado, one in Crested Butte and one in Gunnison, and had worked to build a 46,000-square-foot grow facility in Pueblo.
Reached by phone in Colorado, Olesen said his company does not conduct interviews nor tours of its grow facilities. Olesen said Ingutti misunderstood Olesen’s policy when he consented to the interview.
Olesen said the Camp Verde grow facility is up to code and was approved by the Arizona Department of Health Services and that neighbors in Camp Verde should have no concerns about it in the community. He declined to comment about the facility’s specifics.
Peggy Lahren, a medical marijuana compliance and enforcement specialist at ADHS, who has worked with Camp Verde on the applications and compliance of marijuana growers, said
July 8 that she could not offer a comment concerning specific area facilities.
“Every community is different. Every community’s law enforcement is different,” Lahren said, adding that she could think of no existing legislation that would make growers wary of media exposure.
Though not discussing grow facilities, Olesen has been interviewed at length about his Colorado retail stores. He spoke to the Boston Globe in 2014 about the Crested Butte location regarding his store’s acceptance of credit cards, which is unique in the industry. Because legal medical marijuana remains a Schedule I drug at the federal level — alongside illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine — many banks have refused to allow growers to open accounts, meaning most Colorado stores operate on a cash-only basis.
Olesen was also interviewed by the Crested Butte News after Soma won a 2014 “Best of the Butte” business award. Olesen discussed how his business supported local sports teams, the Tough Enough To Wear Pink cancer research nonprofit program and Thrive, a nonprofit which works with cannabis businesses and activists to refocus substance-based “drug prevention” toward health-based “addiction prevention” in local communities.
According to the interview, posted on Soma’s website, Oleson said, “Providing a safe and reliable establishment for the consumption of marijuana has been very rewarding for us.”
According to the Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley, Olesen spent the majority of his career in San Diego, where he was recruited from University of California at Berkeley to work as an engineer with solar turbines. He created a number of start-up companies. Olesen also taught entrepreneurship at the University of California San Diego.
Olesen and his family moved in 2007 from San Diego to Mount Crested Butte, where they now live. Olesen served one term as vice chairman of the Gunnison Watershed School District Board of Education, and one term as a planning commissioner for Mountain Crested Butte.
