Parallel Closes Both Florida Cannabis Cultivation Sites

Parallel Florida LLC has permanently closed its only two cannabis cultivation and processing plants in Florida and cut 211 jobs, according to layoff notices filed with the state. The move guts the in-state production of Surterra Wellness, the retail brand Parallel operates and the state’s fifth-largest medical marijuana chain by store count. For a company whose license is built on growing its own supply, walking away from both grows is a retreat from production itself.

The Atlanta-based company disclosed the cuts in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings posted by the Florida Department of Commerce on July 21, 2026. One notice covers 157 workers at a greenhouse complex in Wimauma, in Hillsborough County southeast of Tampa; the other covers 54 at a site in Lakeland, in neighboring Polk County. Layoffs began July 6, 2026 and ran across a two-week window, and most of the eliminated roles are cultivation and production technicians. Parallel’s head of people and culture, Robin DeBaise, told the state the workers face a permanent employment loss and that neither plant will reopen. The company said it gave affected workers information about Florida’s Rapid Response reemployment program. The employees are not unionized.

Parallel has not said why it closed the plants, or whether further cuts are coming elsewhere in its four-state footprint. The two sites together hold more than 330,000 square feet of greenhouse cultivation space and stood as the company’s only operating Florida grows as recently as a September 2023 disclosure tied to its debt restructuring.

A licensed grower with nowhere to grow

Florida runs one of the most tightly controlled medical markets in the country. Its licensees, called medical marijuana treatment centers, are vertically integrated by law: the same company must cultivate, process, and dispense everything it sells. That makes cultivation the foundation of the license, not an expense a company can simply switch off.

Surterra still runs 44 dispensaries statewide and, by the Office of Medical Marijuana Use’s count, serves a market of 937,501 active patients as of mid-July 2026. Closing both grows leaves an obvious question the company has not answered: how it keeps those shelves stocked. The contrast is sharp — newer operators are still paying to enter Florida even as an incumbent pulls its own production offline. That split reflects individual balance sheets more than the health of the market.

Real estate it already sold

Parallel does not own the buildings it just shut. It sold the Wimauma property to Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR ) (NYSE: IIPR) in a March 2020 sale-leaseback for $35.3 million, then sold the Lakeland grow to the same landlord in a second, similar deal months later. Both were long-term, triple-net leases, and the structure let Parallel pull cash out of its real estate to bankroll expansion. On the Wimauma deal, IIP also agreed to reimburse up to $8.2 million in tenant improvements, deepening its stake in Parallel’s Florida operation.

The mechanics now run in reverse. A triple-net tenant that abandons a purpose-built cannabis greenhouse leaves the landlord with a specialized, hard-to-re-let building and a lease to enforce or renegotiate. Innovative Industrial Properties, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, is the counterparty most exposed to what Parallel just did. Other operators unwinding cultivation have handed their landlords the same problem.

The end of a long unwind

The company making these cuts is what survived a collapse. Chewing-gum heir William “Beau” Wrigley Jr. took control of Surterra in 2018 and rebranded it Parallel, expanding into Massachusetts, Nevada, Texas and Pennsylvania. A $1.9 billion deal to take the company public through a special-purpose acquisition company, backed by music executive Scooter Braun, fell apart in September 2021 amid investor doubts about its financial projections; Wrigley stepped down as CEO weeks later.

A debt spiral followed. Parallel defaulted on its senior obligations in 2021, and by September 2023 its secured creditors, led by an affiliate of Canada’s SNDL Inc (SNDL )., took control of its Florida, Massachusetts, Texas and Nevada operations through a strict foreclosure that erased more than 80% of the company’s debt and left the restructured business with about $100 million still outstanding. That same filing put Parallel’s second-quarter 2023 net revenue at roughly $52 million. The collapse also drew lawsuits from investors and former executives who alleged Wrigley had misrepresented the company’s finances, one of which the parties settled in 2026. Distressed cannabis assets have changed hands on comparable terms across the industry.

What is left in Florida is a 44-store chain whose only disclosed cultivation has gone offline, with no announced replacement. The near-term signals to watch are whether Surterra’s stores stay stocked, whether Innovative Industrial Properties writes down or restructures the two leases, and whether the 211 jobs cut in Florida are the first of wider reductions across Parallel’s platform.