Patrick Moroney, Real Estate Director Zoned Properties- Interview Series

“Site selection, contract negotiation, and execution are hard enough in traditional commercial real estate. Cannabis just adds another set of headaches to persevere through.”

Patrick Moroney

One of the greatest challenges in setting up a cannabis business is securing real estate. The industry is highly regulated and real estate is almost asphyxiated by the prevailing bureaucratic red tape. Unlike traditional businesses, cannabis has very restrictive zoning laws and the problem is compounded by landlord apathy due to the many years of cannabis stigmatiation. The overall result is a scarcity of real estate options for the industry which of course pushes costs through the roof.

Patrick Moroney is the Director of Real Estate for Zoned Properties, a strategic real estate development firm whose primary mission is to provide real estate and sustainability services for the regulated cannabis industry. We spoke to him to get an insider view of the challenges and opportunities that exist in cannabis real estate.

Meet Patrick

As an intro, how did your career path lead you to cannabis real estate?

I was working in industrial real estate and was having a hard time building a legitimate book of business. I decided it was best to specialize and saw an opportunity in cannabis. It’s taken a lot to get to the point where I was knowledgeable and experienced enough to be a real asset in the space – but eventually it paid off and I now have the confidence and ability to serve a wide variety of clients.

What are some of the real estate challenges facing the regulated cannabis industry?

Site selection, contract negotiation, and execution are hard enough in traditional commercial real estate. Cannabis just adds another set of headaches to persevere through. It can be complicated and difficult to navigate through all of the regulatory challenges – from licensing to zoning and permitting. Also, every state comes with a different set of rules. But I think the biggest challenge is that cannabis operators and their real estate partners don’t have access to traditional banking and lending. Hopefully that changes soon.

Can you shed some light on democratizing real estate in the regulated industry?

Democratizing cannabis is the first step to create an equal playing field for mom and pop to invested companies entering the industry. By providing tools that opens doors for those with smaller budgets, potential license holders will have a better chance at helping to create an industry that is not overrun by a few large companies. At Zoned Properties, we are currently working on some technologies that can help with this issue and cannot wait to introduce it to the market.

Which has been your best real-estate project to date and what was the one lesson that you learned from executing this project?

I want to be sensitive to the clients I represent and allow them to tell their own story – but I have been lucky enough to work on several large-scale cultivation projects. I was able to identify properties that eventually went through the land use process and were approved for cannabis cultivation. I was then able to lease those properties out to strong tenants in a very short time frame. Those have been very rewarding and I’ve been able to see all perspectives of the process – the operator, the real estate investor, regulatory compliance, and construction, among others.

In a nutshell, what does it take to put together a multi-million-dollar cannabis commercial real estate project?

Problem-solving. It all comes down to creative solutions. The business owners and real estate partners that can work through issues and compromise with those on the other side of the aisle – they get things done. If you don’t have the ability to be cooperative – you don’t get anywhere.

Thank you for the great interview and for all of the work that you have done to help move this industry forward, readers who wish to learn more should visit Zoned Properties.