Maya McFadden Photos
Smith: “Centers like this is what makes people to become successful.”
The reborn West Hills community center, The Shack, received a $550,000 grant to continue restoring the safe haven.
The center was closed for the past two decades. West Hills/West Rock Alder Honda Smith has worked with neighbors to revive the center to bring art, academic, and social programming to a “new generation of West Rock residents.”
State and local leaders, including former Mayor Toni Harp, State Rep.Toni Walker, State Sen. Gary Winfield, Mayor Justin Elicker, and Alders Richard Furlow and Steven Winter, joined Smith and staff of the Shack Monday for the grant announcement.
Lt Gov. Susan Bysiewicz led the Monday announcement. She said she worked with state and local leaders to prioritize getting the grant funds for the center because of West Hills’ history of “making a neighborhood into a community.”
“A lot of the things you see came from the community,” Bysiewicz said.
The grant funds will be used to transform the center’s back storage area to a music studio for people to learn engineering and production.
“Instead of making money on the street, they can make money in here,” Smith said.
The soon to be Shack music studio.
Speakers at the event described the announcement as a “great way to start the new year.”
“We love our city, and we love our community, and we love each other. And the best way we can demonstrate that is by having bread together, having music together, and having socializing together,” Walker said.
Walker and Winfield worked with Smith to get the grant application submitted.
Winfield has since held discussions with youth at the center.
“We often talk about the issues our young people have, but sometimes we forget we have the power to do something about it,” Winfield said.
State Rep. Toni Walker.
State and local leaders described Smith as having a “tenacious spirit” for spearheading the revival project.
“Centers like this is what makes people to become successful,” Smith said.
Elicker said he hopes to see community centers established in every neighborhood of the city.
“Many of our leaders in the community are a product of these sites,” Elicker said. “We will be doing more of these types of things.”
He added that the city plans to invest $135,000 into the center to improve its heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system.
Smith worked with neighbors to repaint the center, cut overgrown trees, and furnish the center.
During the state officials’ visits, they tagged the center’s new interactive art door in its game room.
The announcement came a week after four high schoolers and an art teacher from Hillhouse and resident of West Hills painted the center’s game room.
The room includes a mural of local artist Stezo and former Ward 30 Alder Ronald Augustine, who founded and named the community center the Shack in the 1980s.
Shack Interim Executive Director Carolyn Kinder has lived in West Hills for 46 years. She is a retired New Haven Public School educator who served for 35 years.
“What people can expect when they walk through our doors is a warm caring individual who is concerned about their needs, their family needs, and all the needs of this community,” Kinder said.
Kinder plans to run academic programming at the center taught by retired educators.
Kinder: “A place where people can come and define who they want to be and get all the help they can get.”
Smith also thanked neighbor Amos Smith for mentoring her through the process of reviving the center. She said he helped the center to get its first grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and donated furniture to the center.
During a building tour with Bysiewicz, Smith showed the up-and-running game room, computer lab, senior center, Community Action Agency center, homework center, Pathway to Career center, outdoor concert/entertainment space, and community garden.
Programming in robotics, computer fundamentals, programming, meditation, life skills, financial literacy, healthy eating, college readiness, and mental support are planned as well.
The center recently received a $1,000 gift card donation from Home Depot, which will be used to purchase additional supplies to repair the building.
Watch the full announcement here.
Smith gives tour of outdoor concert/entertainment space.
Shack community vegetable garden.
I smile watching SuBy put her title in front of her name, because otherwise no one would know who she was? Serious, since New Haven's relationship with Yale is always an issue, did anyone discuss it with SuBy? She is, after all, one of two state representatives on the Corporation.