Proposed cannabis manufacturer in Del Rey Oaks would give the city a big fiscal boost.

From the outside, it’s doesn’t look like anything to get excited about: A drab industrial building on Calle Del Oaks, a Del Rey Oaks street lined with similarly drab industrial buildings.

But on the inside, a business is readying to set up an operation that will have a transformative effect on the city’s bottom line.

On Aug. 21, the Del Rey Oaks Planning Commission unanimously approved a permit for Integral Innovations, LLC, a cannabis manufacturing business projected to gross about $10 million in revenue in its first year.

If those numbers are met, Del Rey Oaks would garner about $500,000 in annual tax revenue from the operation – a big boost for a city with a budget of just over $3 million.

Del Rey Oaks City Manager Dino Pick sees the business as continuing the city’s leadership in the local cannabis industry, while also ensuring the city “retains its safe and welcoming character.” The revenue it will bring the city, Pick adds, will allow for infrastructure improvements that would otherwise not be possible.

The Integral Innovations team numbers more than a dozen employees, and is led by Monterey Peninsula residents Adam Yader, Marc Zurlinden and Harold Hawkins. They are confident about their projections, and for good reason: They’ve already had a test run.

In April and May of this year, they operated a cannabis manufacturing business in another building on Calle Del Oaks that is leased by Bob and Lonna Blodgett, owners of Monterey Bay Alternative Medicine, the Peninsula’s only brick-and-mortar dispensary. In just two months, Yader and his team sold $1.1 million in cannabis wax, an unrefined cannabis derivative used to make edibles and other products.

But the group quickly decided to go into business for themselves, and are ready to start manufacturing again in Del Rey Oaks this fall.

This time, they plan to stick around.

“There’s a lot of potential,” Yader says. “We expect to continue to grow.”

That potential to grow, Hawkins says, is made possible by the company’s focus on manufacturing.

“With cultivation, you’re limited by how much area you have,” Hawkins says. “With a dispensary, you’re limited to the local population. In manufacturing, in a very small footprint – especially with a lot of automation – you can provide medicine for people all around California.”

The Planning Commission’s Aug. 21 approval is subject to a 20-day appeal period, after which the team hopes to hit the ground running.