(Wednesday, April 12, 2017) – ENEROC, a new Rochester-based company, today announced an agreement to serve as a subcontractor for an LED lighting installation project at Rochester General Hospital. The startup business is the first launched by the Market Driven Community Corporation (MDCC), an independent non-profit focused on the development of worker-owned businesses within the City of Rochester. Each cooperative startup is intended to provide area anchor institutions such as Rochester Regional Health with competitive options for local contracting of goods and services.

“Creating accessible jobs within our city strengthens our neighborhoods and provides greater opportunities for all its residents,” said Mayor Lovely A. Warren. “The Market Driven Community Corporation enhances this aim by launching cooperatives like ENEROC that empower our residents to eventually become worker-owners of a competitive business.”

ENEROC launched in January 2017 and recently hired Doug Caswell as its first Business Manager. Caswell brings more than 25 years of experience in manufacturing and engineering with a focus on safety and quality. Over the coming weeks, Caswell will hire and train an initial crew of three employees who will install LED lighting in parking garages at Rochester Regional Health.

ENEROC is fortunate to have a strong partner in local LED prime contractor Lumalon, for whom ENEROC will be subcontracting and is assisting in training ENEROC employees. Caswell is also negotiating a Master Services Agreement with SunCommon NY, a locally based solar developer, for the installation of commercial and community solar projects.

Finally, Caswell is also working with Go Green LED International to secure additional contracts to support local assembly of their proprietary LED produces, and help ENEROC scale within its first year.

“Rochester General Hospital is proud to work with MDCC Corp. and ENEROC to both advance our sustainability initiatives and create local employment opportunities,” said Nancy Tinsley, president, Rochester General Hospital. “Efforts like those of MDCC align with the vision of Rochester Regional Health to enable each member of the community to enjoy better, healthier lives.”

The City of Rochester’s Office of Innovation oversaw the initial development of the now independent MDCC initiative beginning in 2015, with feasibility and implementation support from The Democracy Collaborative, a national nonprofit think tank with expertise in worker- owned cooperatives and anchor institution partnerships. Based on the successful model Democracy Collaborative helped develop in Cleveland, Ohio, MDCC Corp. was launched in late 2016 and plans to retain a 10 percent stake in ENEROC with the remaining 90 percent ultimately transferring to its employees.

​“As a consultant on this project, I saw how committed Rochester's citizens are to building a fairer, more inclusive economy, on their own terms,” said Jessica Bonanno, Director of Employee Ownership Programs for the Democracy Collaborative. “We’ve been proud to support the community in developing the infrastructure for the creation of further cooperative businesses and we celebrate the collaborative local leadership that made this first business possible.”

This business model is part of MDCC Corp’s comprehensive strategy to identify, launch, and oversee a network of worker-owned businesses capable of meeting the needs of regional anchor institutions such as hospital systems, colleges, and universities.

MDCC Corp. operates as an independent non-profit with diverse representation from city neighborhoods, local business, non-profits, higher education, and area philanthropies. The board of directors for MDCC includes four participating anchor institutions including Rochester Regional Health, University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, and St. John Fisher. The Office of Innovation, established by Mayor Warren in 2015, applies data-driven practices to alleviate poverty and remove barriers to local employment.

About Lumalon- Lumalon is a LED solutions company founded 6 years ago by Tom Murray. Lumalon provides turnkey LED solutions for commercial facilities throughout Rochester and surrounding areas. Lumalon performs energy audits, LED lighting retrofits and new installations for commercial business owners. Due to direct manufacturing relationships, Lumalon is able to offer owners a turnkey solution at a below market price. Lumalon will help you build the correct LED lighting system for your company, products and services. Lumalon offers the newest technology in LED lighting for everything from hospitals, campuses, working environment to parking lots and more. Through vigorous evaluation, research and partnering with established, qualified partners, Lumalon ensures that the products used are of the very best quality. Learn more: www.lumalon.com

About SunCommon - SunCommon believes that everyone has the right to a healthy environment and brighter future – and renewable energy is where it starts. Energy from the sun can power our lives and build vibrant communities. Our mission is to tear down barriers to clean energy in Rochester and use our business as a force for good. SunCommon is a Certified BCorp, an honor earned through a rigorous third party assessment of our commitment to a triple bottom-line of people, planet and profit. The business is employee owned and operates out of a wind and solar powered, net-positive headquarters that produce more energy than it uses. For more information, check out www.suncommon.com/ny.

About Go Green LED International- Based in their downtown Rochester, Main Street facility, Go Green LED International is a solutions based company focused on expert service and cutting-edge LED lighting technologies. Michael Viggiani founded the company in 2008 and states Go Green’s mission is to continue to be pioneers in the field of sustainable energy and lighting. Their guiding principle is simple: to promote energy conservation and emission reduction while delivering significant cost-savings to the consumer by means of their energy and lighting technology innovations. The firm is further expanding to include a new solar division called Go Green Sun providing Commercial and Industrial solar powered street lamp retrofitting and large solar powered distributed energy installations which will also hopes to utilize ENEROC for installation support. Learn more: https://gogreenledinternational.com/

-30-
 
Media contacts:
 City of Rochester: Donald Starver, 428-7135

OTHER MEDIA CONTACTS:
Democracy Collaborative: Senior Communications Associate Erin Kesler, 703-895-3502

From Next City: "What could you do with $1.7 billion in a city of around 200,000, where 33 percent of households live below the federal poverty line? The city of Rochester, with Mayor Lovely Warren at the helm and supported by partners and allies across New York State and beyond, has hatched a plan to tap into at least that much to help level the economic playing field for Rochester’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. 'It’s about being able to give employees an opportunity to have ownership and to build wealth within their own communities,' says Warren. The plan consists of supporting the creation or growth of cooperatively owned businesses located primarily in the city’s most distressed neighborhoods, collectively known as the Northern Crescent..."

Read the full article

From the Democrat and Chronicle: "In three neighborhoods on the east side of Rochester, nearly half of the residents subsist on food stamps, and 40 percent of households are scraping by with incomes below the poverty line. Good luck finding a job in these parts of the city, where fewer than one in 10 residents is employed in the neighborhood where he or she lives. More than half of residents who do have jobs are forced to commute to the suburbs. Creating sustainable, living-wage jobs in parts of the city like these is a top concern for local leaders as they work to unravel deeply concentrated pockets of poverty that threaten to undermine the region's economy and quality of life as a whole. Rochester's leaders are looking well beyond New York state's borders for ideas. And led by Mayor Lovely Warren, they've seized upon a model about 250 miles to the west, in Cleveland, Ohio...."

Read the full article

From the Democrat and Chronicle: "Mayor Lovely Warren wants to push forward with a plan to launch a network of businesses owned and operated by their workers — an idea meant to help build wealth and create jobs in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Warren said [...] that creating these for-profit, cooperatively-owned businesses will complement other anti-poverty work planned on the east side of the city this year..."

Read the full article