Warren’s LivWell medical provisioning and cultivation center will be closing early in 2025 according to a state WARN notice dated Dec. 2, 2024.

The notice, issued by Chigago-based parent company PharmaCann, says that the 207,000 square-foot facility located at 14210 11 Mile Road near Groesbeck Highway, will conduct employee separations in connection with the closing of its Warren cultivation center beginning on Jan. 31.

More than 220 employees will be affected by the closure.

The WARN letter states that affected employees are not entitled to bumping rights, which seems to indicate PharmaCann does not plan to move Warren operations to a different city.

LivWell opened its Warren location in 2021 and also has locations in Sault Ste Marie and Cheboygan. The two northern Michigan facilities are to remain open.

Some LivWell employees are represented by the Teamsters Local 337, but it is not known how many of the total number of employees being permanently laid off are union workers. Teamsters Local 337 President Todd Lince said his organization did not yet have a collective bargaining agreement with the Warren location as the employees had just recently voted to unionize.

Lince said the reason for the closing is an overabundance of cannabis in Michigan right now.

The LivWell web site lists its Warren location as “temporarily closed.”

LivWell executive director Thomas Lauzon did not respond to a request for comment.

Michigan Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Robin Schneider said the entire cannabis industry is struggling with price constriction and that she expects the state will see more closures going forward.

“Licenses in Michigan are essentially unlimited and that has led to very fierce competition,” said Schneider. “We also are very heavily regulated and have high overhead and unfair tax liability, so it is very difficult to compete especially with the current price constriction.

“I expect we will see more closures in the future, and my heart goes out to all of the employees losing their jobs.”

Like any other product, cannabis pricing is affected by supply and demand and right now, supply exceeds demand. Oregon and Oklahoma also had unlimited licensing like Michigan but have since implemented a moratorium on issuing new licenses. Some other states set a limit on the amount of licenses that can be issued by the state.

Warren originally issued 15 medical marijuana licenses in 2019. Many of those businesses receiving those licenses likely banked on being able to add a recreational / adult-use license in the future. To date, Warren has not issued any recreational licenses because a lawsuit involving Warren’s original medical licensing is still making its way through the courts.

“Anyone who is medical has been able to also pull a recreational license,” said Schneider. “There may be a few that have not opted into recreational and those businesses would have a difficult time making it.”

Schneider said there is an effort at the state level to combine the two types of cannabis license types in order to streamline the process for business owners and help medical marijuana patients have better access to products.

“The effort is really about government efficiency so that we don’t have to issue two types of licenses and don’t have to regulate redundantly,” said Schneider. “Right now, there is less production of medical cannabis so when a patient goes into a store with their medical card and wants to make a purchase, the selection is less than for recreational.”