The Shack Community Center Celebrates Grand Reopening

The Shack community center in New Haven’s West Hills neighborhood threw open its freshly restored doors on April 6, drawing what amounted to a full roll call of city leadership to 333 Valley Street.

State Sen. Gary Winfield put it plainly. “This is Honda loving her community that makes us all want to be in this space,” he told a packed crowd that included Mayor Justin Elicker, former Mayor Toni Harp, the superintendent of schools, the acting police chief, the Board of Alders president and majority leader, and a roster of state senators and representatives. Not a bad turnout for a Tuesday morning in West Hills.

The occasion was the grand reopening of The Shack, an intergenerational community center founded and run by Alder Honda Smith. The building got a serious overhaul, funded by a $550,000 State Urban Act Grant that covered structural improvements and repairs. Without that money, the restoration doesn’t happen.

From Disrepair to 750 Residents a Month

Smith and a team of neighbors brought The Shack back to life in 2021 after it had sat in disrepair. What they’ve built since is substantial. The center now serves more than 750 residents every month, running educational, vocational, and recreational programs for youth, adults, and seniors. It also provides food assistance and other critical services for families in the neighborhood.

The programming range is striking. Former Mayor Harp ticked through the list at the reopening: art classes, music, a radio station, a vegetable garden, chickens. “There was a blue building that was about to fall apart,” Harp said, “and she saw a center to bring people together, a place to honor former leaders like Ron Augustine, a place to learn art, to make music, to have a radio station, a place with a vegetable garden and chickens.” Credit to Harp for that image: chickens in West New Haven as a symbol of community renewal.

Mayor Elicker zeroed in on what he sees as Smith’s particular gift. She “listens to young people, she listens to what their interests are, what will draw them into this space, and she goes from there,” he said. That’s not a small thing. Plenty of community organizations build programs they think residents need. Smith apparently asks first.

H.O.L.L.A. and the Long Game

The Shack’s reach extends well beyond its walls. Lindy Lee Gold, who worked alongside Smith on the H.O.L.L.A. Mentoring Program, said the effort has helped 125 young people complete college and graduate school. That’s a generational investment. The kind of outcome that doesn’t show up on a single grant report but compounds over decades.

Gold put it simply at the reopening: “Honda has changed not just the lives of young people, but the lives of their future generations.”

Smith herself offered a rare window into the personal history behind all of it. She described a turning point she called grim. “I didn’t want to be around children. I didn’t want to be around anyone,” she said. She found herself in a jail cell for something she said she didn’t do. “I remember the silence more than anything. The kind of silence that comes after rejection, after family turned their backs, friends grew distant.” She said she started praying. “My vision grew clearer. My purpose got louder than my pain.”

That trajectory, from that jail cell to a packed reopening with the mayor and two dozen elected officials, is the actual story of The Shack.

What the $550K Actually Bought

The State Urban Act Grant funding that made the physical restoration possible is worth understanding in context. Connecticut’s Urban Act program channels state dollars toward revitalization projects in distressed municipalities, and New Haven is among the cities that qualify. The grant doesn’t just fix a roof. It signals that state government sees the center as worth preserving.

For West Hills residents, the practical upshot is a building that can keep running year-round without structural concerns hanging over every program.

The New Haven Independent covered the reopening ceremony, including a performance by the Shack Sisters singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with the Shack band, and a moving duet between Jamire Casteel and Smith herself.

The center is at 333 Valley Street. If you haven’t been, that seems like a reasonable thing to fix.