The Shack Sisters singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with backup by The Shack band at April 6, 2026 grand reopening. It was a veritable who’s who of New Haven at the reopening of The Shack community center in West Hills on Thursday morning. For New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, it represented a measure of the respect and goodwill fostered by Alder Honda Smith, founder and executive director of the 333 Valley Street intergenerational community center. “This is Honda loving her community that makes us all want to be in this space,” he told a packed crowd that featured, among other bold-faced names, the mayor, a former mayor, the superintendent of schools, the acting police chief, state senators and representatives, and the Board of Alders president and majority leader, as well as a host of alders. The reopening came after a restoration and renewal project that included structural improvements and repairs to the building, thanks to a $550,000 State Urban Act Grant. Smith and her team of neighbors resurrected The Shack, a former community center that had fallen into disrepair, in 2021. Now a gathering place that welcomes over 750 residents each month, it offers educational, vocational, and recreational programs for youth, adults, and seniors, as well as other critical services and food assistance for families. Chief among the reasons for its reach and impact, according to former Mayor Toni Harp, is Smith’s creativity of mind. “Honda is an example of what thinking something into existence is all about,” she said. “There was a blue building that was about to fall apart, and she saw a center to bring people together, a place to honor former leaders like [former Shack director] Ron Augustine, a place to learn art, to make music, to have a radio station, a place with a vegetable garden and chickens.”  Current Mayor Justin Elicker sounded a similar refrain. Smith, he said, “listens to young people, she listens to what their interests are, what will draw them into this space, and she goes from there.” For Lindy Lee Gold, who helped Smith put 125 young people through college and graduate school with Smith’s H.O.L.L.A. Mentoring Program, it’s simple. “Honda has changed not just the lives of young people, but the lives of their future generations, setting a new paradigm,” she said. Jamire Casteel (right) sings “A Song for You,” with his grandmother Honda Smith. Smith recounted a turning point in her life years ago. “Things were very grim,” she said. “I didn’t want to be around children. I didn’t want to be around anyone.” She found herself in a jail cell for something she didn’t do, she said. “I remember the silence more than anything. The kind of silence that comes after rejection, after family turned their backs, friends grew distant.” She found herself praying, she said. “My vision grew clearer. My purpose got louder than my pain.” If that sense of purpose eventually built The Shack, 333 Valley St. “was never just a building,” said Smith, who thanked, among others, on-site therapist Antoine Nedd, cook Dorothy Monsanto, and chicken keeper Jerrell Merritt. “It was a refuge, a place where youth could feel seen, where seniors could feel valued, where music, love, and purpose could live under one roof. A place where rejection doesn’t get the final word. Love does.” To illustrate that impact, Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood Commercial Development Manager Mark Wilson, who worked with Smith on the recent restoration, referred to Lisa Brown’s stirring rendition of “One Night with the King,” still lingering in the air. “There are a lot of our young people in this community that will have a moment with Honda and at the Shack that will change their life,” he said. With the housing authority rehabbing 210 apartments at McConaughy Terrace on nearby East Ramsdell Street and 140 apartments slated to open on Blake Street, there will soon be more young people, according to Westville/Amity Alder Alder Richard Furlow, the board’s majority leader and youth coordinator at the community center. That was when Smith stepped forward. “That’s not all,” she said, before announcing a second Shack location in the works, this one in South Carolina, where they were recruited to start one. “This is just the beginning,” Furlow said. Outside The Shack. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo The post The Shack Celebrates Grand Reopening appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less