Stamford immigrant services nonprofit Building One Community expands to the city’s East Side

Stamford Advocate By Verónica Del Valle

STAMFORD — The immigrant services nonprofit Building One Community will open a second location on the East Side to house, the organization announced Monday.

Building One Community said in a news release that it expects to run its Immigration Legal Services, Family & Individual Services, Workforce Development, and administrative services out of its new East Side flagship at 417 Shippan Ave. Instructors will continue to teach its English-language learning classes out of the original, Selleck Street location.

Moving to “the East Side of Stamford is something that we had in mind since we opened 11 years ago,” Building One Community President Anka Badurina said. However, the limitations of the B1C warehouse became more apparent during the pandemic.

The air filtration at Selleck Street limited what services they could run out of the space, Badurina said. Plus, with their lease on the West Side ending, finding a place that could meet the growing organization’s needs was front of mind.

Even more so in the last decade, the East Side has steadily transformed into a hub for the city’s immigrant populations, especially for Hispanic and Latino residents. The number of Hispanic residents in the East Side increased significantly between 2010 and 2020, according to Census data. Now, the neighborhood has the second-largest Latino population by percentage, behind only the West Side.