BY KORBETT MOSESLY for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 10/16/2026
Opportunities of our generation is sitting in plain sight.
A generation of business owners is getting ready to retire. Many of their businesses make money, and no one is lined up to take over. If we do nothing, those businesses close or leave local hands. If we get ready, workers and neighbors become the owners.
That is the idea behind a policy Victoria O’Banion, executive director of the Northwest Cooperative Development Center, is bringing to Washington. When an owner decides to sell, the people who already run the place every day get the first real shot at buying it.
The Idea: Workers Get the First Shot
When an owner decides to sell, they must tell their workers. The workers get a set amount of time to organize and make an offer. If their offer matches an outside buyer’s, the owner sells to the workers.
The workers usually buy together, as a worker cooperative or through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The owner still gets paid a fair price. The difference is who ends up owning the business: the people who work there and live nearby, or an outside buyer.
Washington Already Wrote the Blueprint but it was for Mobile Home Parks
This isn’t new for our state. Under RCW 59.20.325, a mobile home park owner has to notify residents before putting the park up for sale. Residents then have 70 days to form a group and say they want to buy. One detail matters: the law gives residents an “opportunity to compete to purchase.” The owner does not have to pick their offer.
Residents have used that opening. In November 2024, the people living at Olga Dor Court in Parkland bought their 48-space park as a cooperative, with help from NWCDC’s ROC Northwest program, according to Pierce County.
“Our top priority was keeping housing affordable for the people here,” said Ben Ward, President, Olga Dor Homeowners Cooperative, as quoted by Pierce County.
The employee version would do the same thing for businesses: give the people with the most at stake a real chance to buy.
Rhode Island and Massachusetts Filed the Bills First
Two states have put the idea into bill form. Both run on the same clock, and both let a selling owner skip state capital gains tax on the first $1 million of the sale.
If the workers’ offer matches or beats an outside offer inside that window, the owner must sell to them. Neither bill has passed. They give Washington a working model to learn from, and a chance to get it right early.
Start With Main Street, Not the Biggest Employers
O’Banion’s approach is a pilot. The first test would be businesses with about 5 to 50 employees, such as restaurants and neighborhood shops. That is the same step-by-step path that proved the model in manufactured housing.
Even the debate has value. Lawmakers, owners and workers would have to work through the real details: how much notice is fair, how to keep a sale private and what happens with family transfers. Rhode Island’s committee raised those same questions.
Why Rural Lawmakers Are Listening
Worker ownership offers another path. The business stays open, the jobs stay local and the people who already do the work become the owners. The same tools can help a group buy an empty downtown building. An artist co-op or an after-school collective offering dance and tutoring could buy it, fix it up and put it back to use.
A Law Opens the Door. Financing Walks Workers Through It.
Workers rarely have the cash to buy a business on their own. The deal has to be financed, and that takes partners.
“Debt financing and subsidy financing through partnerships with different financial actors (i.e., CDFIs, banks, etc.) drive more of these ownership opportunities,” said Victoria O’Banion, Executive Director, Northwest Cooperative Development Center.
Olga Dor shows what that looks like. The Pierce County Community Development Corporation put $750,000 from its acquisition loan fund into the residents’ purchase, alongside the state Department of Commerce, the Washington Community Reinvestment Association and the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, according to the county. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs), banks and public programs each carry part of the load. A right-to-buy law opens the door. Financing is what gets workers through it.
We want to recognize the people doing this work. O’Banion is championing the policy, and Kaleb Hoeffgen, a cooperative development specialist at NWCDC who supports Pierce and King counties, is helping lead the center’s employee-ownership work.
This article was reproduced from the Opportunity Links website with permission. See more at olink.news.
