Chicago-based multistate cannabis operator Revolution Global is “at the finish line” of negotiations that will fund the completion of a delayed 75,000 square-foot expansion to its Delevan-based cultivation facility, recently installed president Dustin Shroyer told Grown In yesterday.
The sale-leaseback transaction will also provide capital to fund potential development of an additional 300,000 square-feet of grow space on 70 acres adjacent to that facility, Schroyer said.
Revolution, which operates dispensaries in Illinois, Maryland, and Arkansas along with a vertically-integrated dispensary-cultivation medical license in Florida, is in the process of opening a flagship Enlightened recreational dispensary. The suburban Schaumburg pot shop, a stone’s throw away from an IKEA and multiple department stores, is the “plus one” location connected to Mount Prospect-based New Age Care, a medical dispensary Revolution acquired in 2019.
While company leaders are not disclosing how much equity and debt capital the privately-held company has raised since it was founded in 2014 at the onset of Illinois’ medical marijuana program, Crunchbase reports total capital raised at $55.4 million through a $45.6 million venture round in October 2018 and a $9.8 million round in January.
In October 2019, Revolution entered into a $29 million sale-leaseback transaction with Las Vegas-based cannabis real estate investment company Freehold Properties. Last October, Revolution sued Freehold for $3 million claiming that it only received $5.5 million before Freehold stopped issuing payments in March 2020.
Around the time of the lawsuit, Revolution confirmed to Grown In that prior chief executive Mark de Souza was leaving the company and that chief operating officer Shroyer along with chief financial officer Tripp Murray would run the company while a successor was named. Earlier this year Shroyer was promoted to president.
In an interview last month, Shroyer told Grown In that Revolution had recently settled with Freehold and would soon line up alternate sale-leaseback funding for the Delevan grow site. He added that the company was “at a nascent stage” of raising an equity round that would kickstart Revolution’s presence in Florida, where it owns “a small scale operation as required by law.”
Cannabis companies founded in Illinois around the same time as Revolution including Green Thumb Industries, Cresco Labs, Verano Holdings, and Pharmacann have all raised hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private markets to fund facility expansion and acquisition of cultivation and retail operators across the country.
“The market is demanding and always changing,” said Shroyer, a Denver native who came to Revolution in 2014 initially as a subject matter expert consultant in the fields of cultivation and production. One year later took the reins as COO, and now finds himself captaining a ship overcoming headwinds.
“We have a lot of funding opportunities available and we are working on everything simultaneously.”
