Canopy

Canopy is the actual cultivation area — the flowering and vegetative footprint — not the whole building. In states such as California and Colorado, license tiers are set by canopy square footage. Michigan is different: the CRA grades growers by plant count, not canopy. Class A is up to 100 plants, Class B up to 500, and Class C up to 2,000, with an Excess Grower license available above Class C through a stacking mechanism.

Canopy still matters for real estate, even though it carries no licensing tier in Michigan. Canopy area is what sizes lighting load (watts per square foot), HVAC tonnage and dehumidification capacity, electrical service, water and wastewater demand, and often structural loading where multi-tier racking is used. How much square footage goes to non-canopy functions — drying, processing, packaging, mechanical, secure storage — determines whether a building can actually support the buyer's intended plant count.

A building's prior canopy-driven build-out (lighting, HVAC tonnage, electrical service upgrades) can be a real asset for a buyer who plans to run a similar-scale grow, but a mismatch between an existing build-out and a buyer's target license class is a common source of renegotiation during diligence.