Employee-owned Glenville laundry plans $1 million expansion, more jobs

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, an employee-owned company, is planning a $1 million, 6,500 square foot expansion of its Glenville laundry facility in order to serve growing demand for its commercial laundry services. The expansion will allow them to better serve their existing customers as well as add new customers. 

As part of the expansion, Evergreen Cooperatives CEO John McMicken said, the company will hire about 15-20 new employee-owners at this location and is expecting to add a total of 30 positions companywide. Currently, the laundry has 188 employees. He expects to break ground this year and have the additional space, which will replace a parking lot next to the Glenville location, operational by this fall. The laundry, which also operates a facility owned by the Cleveland Clinic in Collinwood, is under the umbrella of Evergreen Cooperatives, a nonprofit with a mission of starting employee-owned companies, creating jobs, and building wealth for worker owners. 

“This is our first major expansion,” said McMicken of the Glenville location, which has been up and running for the past 14 years and services hospitals and nursing homes. “As that business has grown, they’ve needed more space. It’s basically the same business mix, there’s just more demand.” 

Evergreen Laundry started in 2009 and added University Hospitals as a client in 2013. It added the Cleveland Clinic in 2018, and in 2022 renewed that contract for another five years. Today, they mainly service the Cleveland Clinic and a few nursing homes. The company was able to buy the laundry facility at 540 E. 105th St. in 2017, allowing it to further expand its operations. McMicken said that thanks to the contract with the Cleveland Clinic as well as a few nursing homes and assisted living facilities, the laundry is now in a position to expand again. 

Evergreen Laundry general manager Allen Grasa said during a tour of the Glenville location that the expansion will add additional capacity as well as a new entrance for trucks picking up clean laundry. “We’re the boutique laundry,” said Grasa, pointing to the fact that the Glenville location, which has fewer automated machines, can handle smaller jobs for customers such as clinics and doctor’s offices. “We have 400 customers out of this one building.” 

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the first of several employee-owned companies started by Evergreen Cooperatives, which launched in 2009 with the help of the city of Cleveland, the Cleveland Foundation, University Hospitals, and others. Today, the parent company not only helps launch new employee-owned businesses but also helps convert existing small businesses to employee ownership. Recently, Evergreen helped convert Phoenix Coffee, Berry Insulation, and Intellitronix, which makes LED gauges for cars, boats, and RVs, to employee-owned companies. 

Evergreen Cooperatives has a total of about 300 employees under its umbrella, McMicken said. The original goal when the company started was to have 1,000 employees at 10 companies within 10 years, but Evergreen hasn’t hit that goal yet. 

Laundry employees, many of whom are city residents who live in nearby neighborhoods, earn an average of $16 per hour and $12,000 yearly bonuses, said McMicken. Evergreen companies are at least 80% owned by employees, with the other 20% being owned by Evergreen Cooperatives, and they’re designed to ensure that this employee ownership is never diminished. “It’s a very cool aspect because it makes this very long-term,” said McMicken. 

Employee-owner Catherine Pullen, who goes by “Miss Cat,” has worked at the laundry for five years and said she loves it. “I like the job, I like the people I work with,” she said. “Being an employee-owner is a real good thing, because you’re part of something bigger. And you get a bonus, and that’s a good thing, too.”

Damon Allen, who has worked at Evergreen Laundry for three years, said working at Evergreen has given him stable employment, and now he’s taking classes to move into a supervisory role. “I transitioned from the streets,” he said, explaining that before Evergreen, he didn’t have a stable job and hadn’t finished college. “They give you a chance, and I’ve fulfilled that chance.” 

Not every business launched by Evergreen has been quite so successful. One of their first companies was a solar provider called Evergreen Energy Solutions, but it proved unsustainable due to ups and downs in the market and changes in the state’s energy tax credits. Another startup, the hydroponic lettuce company Green City Growers, was recently sold to the Indiana-based company Local Roots Cleveland after facing canceled contracts during the pandemic. 

McMicken said the company pivoted to working with small businesses to convert to employee ownership during the pandemic, and so far that is going well. They target small to medium businesses that are too small for private equity investment and whose owners are facing retirement without a clear exit strategy. “That’s a great opportunity for us because it puts us in job preservation mode,” he said. “Otherwise, those jobs could get lost if for no other reason than mom and dad are ready to retire and there’s no one to take it over.” 

McMicken said that Evergreen is working on financing for the expansion project now, which is no easy task given that traditional banks sometimes don’t lend to cooperatives. Regardless, McMicken says they’ll break ground this year, and they’re also working on obtaining some additional city of Cleveland land bank parcels in the area to accommodate employee parking. 

To learn more about Evergreen Cooperatives, visit evgoh.com, call 216/268-5399 or email info@evgoh.com.