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When Rendell “Ren” Boguiren got a job in college at a South Bay pizzeria, he wasn’t expecting it would become a career. Now, as a part-owner in the business, he can’t imagine leaving.

It was a transition made possible because co-founders Kirk Vartan and his wife, Marguerite Lee, made a decision in 2015 to sell the business they started, A Slice of New York, to their employees. Both continue to retain part ownership, along with 14 other worker-owners.

“I take a lot of pride in being an owner,” Borguiren said. “It’s something I never would have expected.”

While employee-owned businesses are a small minority of all companies in the Bay Area and in the nation, it’s a model local cities are increasingly eyeing as one to invest in and sustain. The city of Berkeley became one of the first in the Bay Area earlier this week to directly support the worker-owned business model, when its City Council voted to approve $100,000 over two years to help existing companies as they transition to employee-owned entities. And on Tuesday, Berkeley’s Loan Administration Board will consider changes to a revolving loan fund to make it easier for worker coops to take advantage of the funds, too.

In the South Bay, the city of Santa Clara will hold a study session July 9 to hear about ways it could support worker-owned businesses, a move that follows past efforts in Oakland, Richmond and Fremont.

It makes sense for Berkeley to invest in worker coops, because it’s facing a tidal wave — the so-called “Silver Tsunami” — of small business owners who are expected to retire in the next decade, said Jordan Klein, the city’s economic development manager. According to an analysis the city performed with the help of Project Equity, a nonprofit dedicated to helping existing businesses transition to worker-owned companies, there are at least 1,200 small businesses in Berkeley that are 20 years old or more. Together, these businesses employ 13,000 people and generate a whopping $1.6 billion in revenue.

Across the nine-county Bay Area, Baby Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — make up more than half of all business owners, according to Project Equity. But right now, only 15 percent of those small businesses get passed on to children or sold when the owners retire, and the vast majority of owners don’t have any plans in place for what will happen to their business when they retire, said Alison Lingane, a Project Equity co-founder.

The nonprofit began a pilot program with Berkeley late last year to help the city form a retention, succession and outreach plan for small businesses at risk of closing. About a year earlier, it completed an analysis of legacy businesses in Fremont, to assess which are most at risk, although the city has yet to begin outreach and succession planning.

“We are seeing an increasing interest from cities in engaging with us in this work,” Lingane said. “They’ve have always recognized the importance of the small business community, but now they are seeing that risk, too.”

After the analysis and outreach, Berkeley invested $30,000 in a pilot program for assistance to business owners interested in transitioning to an employee-owned model. Klein said that’s because there is increasing evidence that employee-owned businesses are not only good for workers — who benefit directly in the form of higher pay, better benefits and more control over their work environments — but because they are also better able to weather recessions and tend to stay local. When businesses maintain local ties, they’re more likely to be engaged in civic activities and participate more in philanthropy, he said.

“We care a lot about our legacy businesses,” Klein said, “so we care a lot about how to retain them.”

Already, three businesses are transitioning to a worker-owned model as a result of that initial round of outreach, which took place in February, he said, and others are in early stages of conversation about doing so. Another business, Scientific Glass on Eighth Street, is nearly finished with the process, though Lingane said the company’s owners had reached out to Project Equity for help on the transition prior to the start of Berkeley’s pilot program. The $100,000 the City Council approved on June 25 will extend Project Equity’s contract with the city for another two years of outreach and succession planning.

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The Bay Area’s small business closure crisis is already here In the South Bay, Vartan has been pushing the Santa Clara City Council to do the same. He helped organize a study session for July 9 that will feature presentations by Project Equity and the Sustainable Economies Law Center, among others. In addition to working with Berkeley and Santa Clara, the law center helped spearhead efforts in Oakland in 2015 that resulted in the city formally recognizing worker cooperatives. A push for financial support from the city is currently stalled, said Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, the law center’s policy director.

The law center also helped Berkeley revise the language in its revolving loan fund, a federally-funded program that began in the early 80s to help small businesses, so that worker coops can more easily access the funds. Its Loan Administration Board is expected to vote on those changes Tuesday, July 2. The changes will then need to be approved by the full City Council, probably in the fall, Klein said. The federal government, which supplied the initial funds for the loan program, will also need to give its approval.

That type of loan program just doesn’t exist in the South Bay, Vartan said.

“Nobody is doing that here,” he said. “Our goal is to raise awareness and hopefully have Santa Clara lead that discussion. My hope is that we’ll be able to utilize all the work Berkeley has done. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

If you go:

Berkeley’s Loan Administration Board meeting:

Tuesday, July 2, 2019, at 4:00 p.m. Cypress Room, First Floor, 2180 Milvia St. Berkeley, Calif.

Santa Clara City Council study session:

Tuesday, July 9, 2019, at 6 p.m. City Council Chambers, 1500 Warburton Ave., Santa Clara, Calif.