I can't believe I had to scroll all the way down here to find this comment. If true, then this is a variation of land banking, but I agree with you on how unstable the political picture is at the moment for pot legalization, hence making this business model a little dicey.
However, I've yet to run across an explanation that squares the "they're positioning themselves for growing pot" hypothesis with the question, "why indoors?". If pot is legalized, why grow it more expensively indoors, when it can be another cash crop for far cheaper outdoors?
More control over the product. You can grow "clones" of a plant which effectively make them identical to each other but if one gets more light, more humidity, literally just about anything, it can alter the resulting trichomes and terpenes. By controlling more variables you can have a slightly more reliable product.
Because premium pot is "sinsemilla" (kept without seeds) in order to increase the psychoactive substance production. Sometimes pollination occurs even at indoor very controlled setups, good luck trying to grow sinsemilla in open field.
However, I've yet to run across an explanation that squares the "they're positioning themselves for growing pot" hypothesis with the question, "why indoors?". If pot is legalized, why grow it more expensively indoors, when it can be another cash crop for far cheaper outdoors?