Pride Center Opens Doors To New Home

Elaine Kolb held back tears as she took in the crowd celebrating the New Haven Pride Center’s new home – and absorbed the fact that she could roll through the whole place in her wheelchair.

“This is the first time in my 74 years that I feel like I finally have come home,” she said.

Kolb was one of 50 community members, politicians, and activists celebrating the community center’s new above-ground space at 50 Orange St. at an official ribbon-cutting on Thursday morning.

“This place is more than just walls and floors,” declared Executive Director Juancarlos Soto. ​“It’s a commitment to accessibility and inclusivity.”

For years, the Pride Center operated down the block out of the window-less basement of an architecture firm at 84 Orange St., where the only bathroom was inaccessible to wheelchair users. 

“I only went there one time,” Kolb reflected. She recalled that when she tried to use the Pride Center’s bathroom, her chair wouldn’t fit through the stall. The seat was low, and there was nothing but a rickety toilet paper holder for her to grasp onto for support. She managed to use the toilet safely that day, but she knew that she could have fallen or gotten stuck. 

“I said, ​‘I will never come back here again,’ ” she recalled.

Kolb was accustomed to that feeling of exclusion. ​“The combination of being queer, lesbian, and having a significant visible disability plus significant invisible disabilities — I didn’t belong anywhere,” she said.

The pandemic-era push for virtual and hybrid events enabled Kolb to participate in some Pride Center gatherings on Zoom. But to Kolb, the new wheelchair-accessible space opened a new door to her participation in the Pride Center’s community — and showed a commitment to truly including disabled queer people. 

“This is a homecoming,” she said.

Speaker after speaker at Thursday’s event reflected on the center’s move to a bright, visible, and spacious storefront as symbolic of the organization’s resilience and defiance. 

The move took place just over a year after the center had to shutter its doors entirely after temporarily losing its nonprofit status and then firing its former executive director. Board Co-Chair Hope Chávez heralded the new location as part of an effort to ​“make sure you are never again without this community center that is so central.”

The new location has enabled a fast expansion of the center’s services, including a designated youth hub, a black box movie and gaming room, and a more robust food pantry and clothing closet (which, Support Services Coordinator Bennie Saldana emphasized, are in need of donations).

The new location also makes the Pride Center more visible and noticeable during a period of emboldened anti-queer and anti-trans hatred across the country.

Although Connecticut has relatively more protections for LGBTQ+ residents compared to many other states, ​“we have steps backward,” Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz noted. Last week, Enfield joined towns like Darien and Wethersfield in banning the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag from being flown on municipal property, for instance.

​“Historically, spaces for the LGBTQ community have been hidden: in basements, closets, and for a kid like me, in the pages of a journal,” noted East Rock Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith. ​“You all said, ​‘No’ ” — and worked to be more ​“visible, seen, and proud.”