ScanlanKemperBard buys former Sandoz, Mile High Labs site in Broomfield

BROOMFIELD — Portland, Oregon-based real estate investor and developer ScanlanKemperBard Cos. recently bought a large manufacturing facility in Broomfield that was previously operated by pharmaceutical company Sandoz Inc. and Loveland-headquartered CBD producer Mile High Labs.

Broomfield real estate records show that CRE-SKB 2555 Midway Owner LLC, an SKB holding company, bought the nearly 440,000-square-foot space 2555 W. Midway Blvd. from MHL Broomfield Owner LLC, an entity registered to Mile High Labs’ Loveland address, in mid-July for $17 million. 

“The facility’s strategic location between Denver and Boulder provides immediate access to the region’s highly skilled labor pool and advanced infrastructure,” SKB president Todd Gooding said in a prepared statement. “Broomfield’s proximity to both cities makes it an ideal location for businesses seeking to leverage the strengths of the Denver-Boulder corridor.”

Gooding told BizWest in an email Tuesday that SKB plans to invest about $27 million into its newly acquired Broomfield asset. 

Mile High Labs, which left the Midway Boulevard site in 2022, bought the property from Sandoz in 2019, for $18.8 million. At the time, MLH said that the deal was the largest infrastructure purchase in the history of the CBD industry. 

Sandoz, an affiliate of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG, announced the closure of its Broomfield operation in early 2018 and laid off more than 400 workers in the following months. 

Novartis cited double-digit price erosion from consolidation and increased competition in the U.S. generic drug market as reasons for the closure.

Originally based in Longmont when it was founded in 2016, Mile High Labs moved production to a larger building at 692 N. Denver Ave., Suite 132, in Loveland in 2017. When Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp, production of the crop almost immediately tripled in the U.S. and created a large demand for CBD. Mile High began looking for a larger building.

Aided by a $65 million term-loan facility from investment group MGG Capital, Mile High Labs purchased the Broomfield facility in 2019 and began using it for the manufacture of cannabidiol (CBD) consumer products such as gummies, lotions, tinctures and other personal products, intending to make pharmaceutical-grade cannabis the industry standard.

Just before opening the Broomfield facility, Mile High Labs unveiled what it called “the Mile High Monster,” an industrial-scale modular CBD extraction facility it installed on a partnering farm, with the ability to process 50 acres of hemp per day into full-spectrum oil, the baseline ingredient from which CBD products are made. The company said the Monster could increase its production capacity by more than 500%.

When Mile High Labs left the Broomfield facility about two years ago, company representatives did not answer questions from BizWest about why the company’s tenure in the facility was only three years. 

The Midway Boulevard space, which was built in 1974 on about 23 acres in the Atlas Industrial Park, “turned out to be bigger than they needed,” Broomfield director of economic vitality Jeff Romine told BizWest in 2022. 

The Broomfield acquisition is ScanlanKemperBard’s second in the Boulder Valley in the last month or so. 

The company, in partnership with Chicago-headquartered real estate investment firm Landrock LP,  recently bought the Walnut Business Center in Boulder for $28 million from Kreizel/Perry Partnership LLP. 

SKB plans to reinvigorate the commercial park, which includes more than 123,000 square feet of industrial, retail and service space spread across eight buildings and 6.4 acres.