Evergreen Cooperatives Leading the Way Toward a Sustainable Cleveland
Laundry Maintenance Technician Keith Parkham from the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry is part of the first business launched out of the Evergreen Coopertives Initiative which is helping create a sustainable future for Cleveland's Greater University Circle District. Photo by Janet Century
Green jobs and environmental sustainability can be profitable. That's the thinking behind a growing network of for-profit worker-owned "green" cooperatives launching within the next six months in Cleveland's University Circle and six surrounding neighborhoods.
This Greater Cleveland University Circle District will be the hub for the Evergreen Cooperatives Initiative, which has three goals:
- Change the lives of unemployed or underemployed residents by giving them a chance to share in the ownership of a successful business.
- Keep billions of dollars of institutional spending for goods and services circulating within Cleveland, rather than sending it elsewhere.
- Operate competitive businesses using the latest "green" principles for production, delivery and operations.
The first Evergreen business, Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, opened in October in the Glenville neighborhood. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson called it "a model for how we can put our people back to work and rebuild our community."
"Evergreen Cooperative Laundry is a green business—the greenest commercial-scale laundry in all of Northeast Ohio, very possibly in the entire state," Jackson told a crowd of 250 at the laundry's opening celebration. "It uses less water; it uses less energy; it uses fewer chemicals. These are green jobs for our community, and they exist right here in Glenville."
Seed money for Evergreen Cooperatives comes from the Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund, which issues loans to the businesses using a combination of philanthropic grants, private donations and federal and local dollars. Cooperative businesses are required to pay back these start-up loans; they are not subsidized and must remain competitive to survive.
Successful cooperatives will contribute 10 percent of pre-tax profits to the development fund to seed new Evergreen businesses. A typical Evergreen worker stands to earn $65,000 in equity in their business after eight years on the job.
The businesses are modeled after Spain's Mondragon Cooperative Corp., a consortium of worker-owned companies founded in 1956 that now employ more than 100,000 people. A coalition of partners visited the European cooperative in 2008 to determine how it could be adapted to the needs of Cleveland. As in Spain, cooperatives in Cleveland will supply local businesses, provide livable wages and benefits, and hire locally from low- to moderate-income neighborhoods. A local nonprofit specializing in workforce development, Towards Employment, is recruiting workers through churches and other networks. More than 90 neighborhood residents attended the first community hiring meeting in spring 2009.
Clevelander Medrick Addison, a supervisor for Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, said the promise of earning a stake in the company is a powerful motivator. "Owning your own job is a beautiful thing," Addison said. "It makes you want to work harder. It's about more than a paycheck."
Evergreen businesses currently operating or scheduled to open soon include:
- Evergreen Cooperative Laundry: This $5.7 million startup offers quality, cost-efficient, commercial laundry service to health care institutions, nursing homes and hotels. When fully operational, the laundry will clean more than 10 million pounds of bed linens and create 50 new jobs in the community.
- Ohio Solar Cooperative: An employee-owned, community-based energy company, Ohio Cooperative Solar opened in October to perform large-scale installations of solar panels on roofs of the city's biggest nonprofit institutions, including the Cleveland Clinic. To provide year-round employment, this cooperative also will perform weatherization services for households in Cleveland. It will eventually employ about 50 workers.
- Green City Growers Cooperative: This year-round, large-scale, food production hydroponic greenhouse will be on 14 acres in the heart of Cleveland, with five acres under glass. It will produce several million heads of lettuce per year, along with other crops such as herbs. The greenhouse will employ 50 local residents and will launch in mid-2010.
- Greater University Circle Neighborhood Voice: The Neighborhood Voice will be an innovative, "hyperlocal," community information source that integrates print and online media, serving the neighborhoods and institutions of Greater University Circle. With the guidance of a full-time professional publisher, high school and college students will be trained to run the business side of the Neighborhood Voice, developing their entrepreneurial and journalism skills. Look for the first issue in 2010.
A range of additional service and manufacturing business opportunities are being developed under the Evergreen strategy. The goal is to create 10 new businesses in the next three to five years.
The Evergreen Cooperatives Initiative is part of a larger strategy for Greater University Circle that looks to stabilize the district's neighborhoods—Buckeye-Shaker, Fairfax, Glenville, Hough, Little Italy and a portion of East Cleveland—by providing ample housing options, quality schools, improved transportation and vibrant businesses. By leveraging the strength of the area's major institutions – including Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals—the Initiative looks to build community wealth to transform Cleveland and change lives. In addition to the university and hospitals, partners include the City of Cleveland, the Cleveland Foundation and Shorebank Enterprise Cleveland.
For more information, visit www.ClevelandFoundation.org/VitalIssues/NeighborhoodsAndHousing and click on "Learn more about the Evergreen Cooperatives."