A Medford campus that changes lives one dog at a time just made room to change a lot more of them.

Canine Companions has opened a new residence hall and kennel wing at its Northeast Region training center on Middle Island Road.

The nonprofit celebrated the grand opening of the James and Gina Nazzaro Residence Hall and the Jane Nagy Kennel Wing on Thursday, Sept. 24.

For an organization that has spent more than 50 years pairing expertly trained service dogs with children, adults and veterans with disabilities, the expansion is a game changer.

Every dog it places, along with a lifetime of follow-up support, comes at no cost to the person who receives it.

The bottleneck was never the dogs alone.

Before a client goes home with a new partner, they stay on campus for team training, and the Medford center had only 11 dorm rooms to house them.

That kept the center to roughly 60 graduates a year, while 80 to 100 people were typically waiting for a dog.

The new wing doubles the dorm count to 22, and leaders expect to place more than 100 dogs a year as a result.

That could mean shorter waits for families who have been counting the days.

The project exists thanks to Jim Nazzaro, a Bay Shore builder who constructed and donated the roughly $3.5 million addition himself.

Nazzaro and his wife once volunteered as puppy raisers, caring for a Labrador named Zach who was later matched with a young man in Maryland.

When he learned the campus needed more dorm space, he barely hesitated before offering to build it.

He has described the job as likely the last of a construction career spanning more than four decades, and a fitting way to finish.

Northeast Region Executive Director Debra Dougherty has credited his gift with pushing the organization to grow its breeding program to meet the added demand.

The Medford center serves clients from Maine to Virginia, but its heartbeat is local.

Future service dogs spend about a year and a half living with volunteer puppy raisers before returning to campus for six to nine months of professional training.

Those volunteers are the quiet engine behind every graduation.

For anyone in the Patchogue area who has ever thought about raising a puppy, volunteering or donating, this is a powerful moment to get involved.

The new wing shows what one neighbor's generosity can build, and what a whole community can keep running.