Frank Anello first came to the building at 16th Avenue and Elmira Street as a volunteer, years ago, working to help refugee families establish roots in Aurora. At the time, the office building was known as the Colorado Refugee Wellness Center.
Back in 2020, he came back to the site — this time as the co-founder of Project Worthmore, a nonprofit serving the metro’s immigrant communities. Project Worthmore has turned the place into its headquarters — a project that marked a major milestone this week.
“I remember bringing people here. I remember helping break ground on that community garden,” he said from a podium on the property’s front lawn Wednesday evening. “To be standing on this property as Project Worthmore owns this building, and to have a vision of creating a proper refugee, immigrant, holistic building that serves this community is really a miracle.”
Anello was celebrating the groundbreaking for the second phase of Project Worthmore’s presence at the site, a substantial redevelopment that will add several new services to the site.
Even as Aurora reels from rancorous national attention focused on immigrant asylum seekers and crime, the city is still growing its capacity to help newcomers settle in. The new space will be called “The Roots.”
Aurora was a hub for resettling immigrants long before the national spotlight.
Project Worthmore’s renovation is a multimillion dollar project, which Anello said was funded through donations and grants from the Colorado Health Foundation, the Gates Family Foundation, U.S. Congress and the city of Aurora.
The first phase put a dental clinic and preschool on the block. This new phase will add space for a larger food pantry and medical, mental health and legal services.
Ashley Johnson, Project Worthmore’s director of development, said it makes sense to double down their efforts in this part of the city, even as Republican politicians have targeted Aurora over immigration.
“The work here, especially for the East Colfax corridor, is essential. This is a huge hub for newcomers,” she told us. “Aurora is such a diverse city and we're so proud of that. And without organizations like Project Worthmore and others in the area, there would be no access to healthcare, no access to dental care, no access to food, access to English classes.”
More new immigrants arrive here each year, and not just from communities that have made the news. As the nation fixated on Venezuelan arrivals through the last few years, a parallel migration of people from Mauritania, in West Africa, also came across the nation’s southern border and onto Aurora’s doorstep.
“That was a big pivotal moment for Project Worthmore, to really recognize that we're unable to predict what happens and we need to have the building and the community space to welcome people in, no matter what, and not have to turn anybody away,” Johnson said.
This stretch of East Colfax has been sucked into the national election cycle recently.
Project Worthmore’s headquarters sits between two of the apartment complexes that made international news amid allegations of “takeovers” by a Venezuelan gang.
The buildings have since been put into receivership, with a third party taking control after the property owners failedto make payments on loans. Mayor Mike Coffman has tried to tamp down the rhetoric directed at his city. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has promised a massive deportation if he’s reelected, and said he’d call the project “Operation Aurora.”
Johnson worriesthat this talk of crime and fear will impact the communities she works with.
“They are all lumped into the same group and very much othered,” she said.
Anello agreed.
“When you've got someone talking about ‘Operation Aurora,’ the fear of people living in this community is heightened at a huge level,” he told us.
But as often as immigration is on the lips of this country’s politicians, Anello said his organization, and their growing footprint, exists to fill gaps that he thinks lawmakers may never actually address.
“The immigration system is extremely broken. It has been broken for a number of years. It's not going to get better. It's the system we have, and we just have to learn to work within it,” he said.
While Anello is excited that this renovation will be a significant expansion for Project Worthmore can do, he knows their work will only ever be a very small balm for a very large issue.
“We would be another drop in the bucket for people to come here,” he added. “All we can do is put the best foot forward at providing services, and really changing the image at a national level of what is being portrayed about the city of Aurora.”
