The former medium-security High Plains Correctional Facility in Brush. (Lisa Jager, Brush News-Tribune)

Prison pot plan: Open house, forum Aug. 17

The plan to repurpose a former women’s prison in northeast Colorado for marijuana cultivation and recreational marijuana sales is certainly an original idea.

Nicholas Erker’s objective — to change the big house into a grow house and a pot shop — has raised a lot of questions in the City of Brush, which currently has a moratorium on marijuana businesses through 2016. A City Council meeting Aug. 4 with the first public comment on the proposal drew a standing-room-only crowd, 9News reported.


Related: Read the original report about the ironic dream for marijuana in Brush, Colo.


To help shed some light on the plans, Erker’s company Colorado Farm Products, which bought the prison in March for $150,000, will hold an open house and forum at the former High Plains Women’s Correctional Facility on Sunday, Aug. 17, from 2-5 p.m.

Brush is about a 1½-hour drive from Denver.

The Brush News-Tribune reports there will be a tour of the facility in addition to the forum, which is being held to help raise public awareness and address concerns.

As Erker previously told The Cannabist: “There’s plenty of water, lots of electricity, it’s built of pre-cast, eight-inch concrete walls, ceilings and floors, it’s in an industrial park away from the population and it’s surrounded by 25- to 30-foot exterior fences with razor wire on top — and there’s also an interior fence.

“You’re not going to get more secure than this.”

There will be another public comment session on Monday, Aug. 18, before the council decides whether to lift the moratorium or put the decision in voters’ hands in November, according to 9News.


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