Immigrant parents just say no to cannabis dispensary
Let me write this so a 6-year-old could understand the meaning: Cannabis dispensaries should not be open for business near children.
The Stamford Planning Board somehow missed this in advancing AYR Wellness’s application to open at 417 Shippan Ave. It’s now up to the city Zoning Board to do the right thing. The application accurately notes that “The immediate area is characterized by a variety of commercial uses including a bank, funeral home, restaurants, catering center, selfstorage facility as well as others.”
What it neglects to mention is that “others” includes an Americares clinic and Child Guidance Center therapy program.
And, oh yeah, there’s also what the application describes as “offices” on the second floor of the building where the dispensary would be situated.
As I enter BuildingOne Community’s (B1C) second floor Thursday, the first sound I hear is of small voices chirping the text they’re reading as part of the Homework Club. The agency’s mission is to integrate immigrants into the community. In an America where battle lines and fantasy walls are drawn over immigration, this is a demonstration of how to make a better nation.
The voices belong to the children of immigrant parents who don’t yet have the language skills to help their kids with homework. So they get a boost from B1C staff and volunteers, many of whom are teenagers from Connecticut’s wealthier communities of Westport, Darien and Greenwich.
One of the books they’re reading offers the wolf ’s perspective about “Little Red Riding Hood.” B1C officials don’t see their landlord or AYR Wellness as the Big, Bad Wolf. The landlord needs tenants, after all. And dispensaries are now legal in Connecticut. Ayr Wellness, though, is no mom-and-pop local endeavor. It’s a Miamibased chain with more than 85 licensed dispensaries.
NIMBY stories are familiar along the Gold Coast of Connecticut. The twist to
this one is that the immigrants are passionate about not having cannabis sold just below where their children are doing their homework.
This is not the only fight of its kind. It’s not even the only one in Stamford. Emma S. Goings, president of the Stamford Branch of NAACP, is leading a protest of Budr Cannabis attempting to open at 389 West Main St., which happens to be near Jackie Robinson Park and the Yerwood Center. I can only imagine what Major League Baseball’s first Black player and Joyce Yerwood, the first Black female physician in Fairfield County, would have had to say about any of this.
“The surrounding towns of Darien, New Canaan, Greenwich and Westport have banned marijuana dispensaries,” Goings wrote. “Who can blame them for the damage that can be done to our youth and young adults.”
Several people I talk to wonder aloud why the dispensaries aren’t moving into neighborhoods such as upscale Harbor Point, which is filled with young residents with disposable income.
The last time I visited B1C was just before the Fourth of July. It was abuzz with the sounds of construction for its expansion one year after opening at the location. It’s now been 13 years since the agency, and its programs such as the Homework Club, became a hub for the immigrant community. Other services include English lessons, legal services and assistance with employment.
Completion of the expansion work in October meant “we have the perfect space for all of our activities,” says B1C Executive Director Anka Badurina. The move and expansion translated to a 30% increase in the number
of clients B1C serves, raising the figure to 4,700 people in 2023. There’s room for further growth, as they have wait lists.
This is anything but office space. Right now, in the middle of a Homework Club session, it could pass for any elementary school classroom.
No cannabis dispensary would be allowed near a school in Stamford, let alone in the same building.
“To me, we are an extension of the schools,” volunteer Anne Downey says.
She should know. Downey worked at Toquam, Rogers and Springdale schools in Stamford before retiring a decade ago.
The B1C team found out about the cannabis application from members of the Shippan Neighborhood Association.
“We moved to this location because it was the perfect family neighborhood,” Badurina says.
Behind her is a window that offers of panoramic view of Scalzi Park, with softball and soccer fields, along with tennis courts where the kids sometimes take lessons. This unseasonably warm March Wednesday only hints at how crowded the neighborhood will get with children on a summer day. Even without B1C, this is no place for a cannabis dispensary.
Badurina keeps trying to persuade me that B1C deserves the same consideration as a school. I’m not the one she needs to convince.
“What is a school? Is it a building?” she asks. “No, it’s the kids,” I reply. B1C has its own rules: No one can enter if they are smoking, drinking alcohol or inebriated. They wouldn’t want a bar or liquor store as a downstairs neighbor either.
Staffers also express concern about the volunteers. These are predominantly white teens from
white towns working with children who come from homes where Spanish or Haitian Creole dominate. This is how relationships are formed and potential biases are vanquished.
“(The teens) come to B1C because they have access to a population they usually don’t see,” Badurina says. “They get to know the Marias and Muhammads by name. That’s when you start to integrate people.”
B1C staffers also dread compromising the hardearned trust they have nurtured with the immigrant community. But if the Zoning Board needs to understand anything at its March 25 meeting on the matter, it’s that these parents are the loudest advocates for their children.
When they came to pick up the kids after Homework Club, nine parents gathered in a conference room to let me know they don’t want their niños exposed to the sights and smells of cannabis. My Spanish is as shaky as their English, but we get help from Elena Perez Moreno, development and external communications director at B1C.
It’s poignant when the parents voice concern for the teen volunteers, the children who are not their own. They also bring depth to the issue by noting that walking past a dispensary every day could normalize cannabis for their own kids.
Finally, one mother looks around the room at the other parents. She is the first one to test some English.
“Everybody says ‘No,’ “she declares.
The other parents voice a chorus of “nos.”
That should make the message clear, in any language.