Culture & Community | LGBTQ | Arts & Culture | New Haven Pride Center | Ninth Square
Herold and Valentine.
Kylee Herold and Lexi Valentine stood in the center of what was supposed to be the teen lounge, taking in every detail one last time. There were the too-quiet gaming consoles, empty beanbag chairs, a crafting corner with bright, neatly arranged supplies. A painted black fist, rising against a rainbow backdrop, looked out from a canvas behind them. A laptop and chair, once set up for homework help, sat unoccupied. On one shelf, Valentine noticed a rainbow-patterned ukulele, half of its strings askew.
“I can re-string it and give it to you on your birthday!” Herold said, taking it gently into her hands. She did the mental math: there were just over four weeks until Valentine made another trip around the sun. Plenty of time.
Valentine scrunched up her face. “I was really looking forward to celebrating it here,” she said. She didn’t have to add the words With you.
Those small, meaningful and bittersweet moments multiplied at 50 Orange St. Wednesday, as the New Haven Pride Center gathered staff and volunteers for one final workday before closing the building’s doors for at least a month. For a few final hours, it was as if time slowed down, measured in each candid exchange, chewed and trembling lower lip, seconds-long embrace and community member who walked in the door.
Through 4 p.m., people continued coming in for the space’s food pantry and clothing and hygiene closets, making clear the community need that the Center fills every day. Staff, in turn, worked to direct them to mission-aligned resources in the city and region, including A Place To Nourish Your Health (APNH), Q Plus, Anchor Health CT, and emergency food providers like the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) and Loaves and Fishes.
Laura Boccadoro, who has in many ways been the heart of the Center since 2019.
“It’s a whole mix of emotions,” said Operations Director Laura Boccadoro, who first joined the Center as an intern in the summer of 2019, stayed on to help coordinate New Haven Pride, and has assisted with every aspect of day-to-day operations in the years since. “A lot of it is just the uncertainty for a lot of us. I wish we had more solid answers.”
She motioned to a pizza party taking place in a large communal room that has hosted everything from family-style dinners to observations of Día de los Muertos. Twinkling white lights with fat, pink paper cutouts of pencils hung from the ceiling. At least four different discussions wove through the room. “This is a hard reminder of what we’re losing today. This has been my home for so long now.”
The closure, which the board has framed as “hopefully temporary,” comes two days after an email announcing that the Center would “cease normal operations” and furlough all staff starting at 4 p.m. Wednesday, under the weight of an outstanding $200,000-plus debt to the Internal Revenue Service. As of publication of this article, staff members are officially on furlough, and the organization has paused its partnership with the Connecticut Foodshare, which helped stock its emergency food pantry.
For at least the next month, staff members will not have access to the building: Board Co-Chairs Hope Chávez and Nick Bussett plan to “check in” on it and be on-site for a few pre-scheduled events, Bussett said in a phone call Wednesday. He added that Beacon Communities, with which the organization has a five-year lease, has been “super gracious and supportive,” and that the Center plans to remain in its 50 Orange St. building at least through the end of March.
The Center received a chest freezer and industrial fridge in December of last year; those will also remain at 50 Orange St. for the time being.
The loss to the community—whether temporary or not—is already palpable. For almost exactly 30 years and in at least five locations, the Center has worked to grow its footprint through affinity groups, support services, institutional collaborations and programming specifically by and for members of the LGBTQ+ community. In the past nine years, that work has become both more visible and more frequent, with new options for youth and elders, case management services, emergency food and clothing assistance, and a physical space that is large enough to host multiple events at any given time.
Wednesday, several volunteers and interns mourned that loss specifically, in what has become a beloved third space for many of them.
“I don’t think I’ve processed it,” said Sense Kirk, who joined as a volunteer after the 2024 Presidential Election, and has since become the organization’s volunteer coordinator. When Kirk first arrived at the Pride Center roughly a year ago, they had only been out for a few years. “I was seeking community,” and something about the Center just clicked.
As Boccadoro led volunteer orientations, Kirk fell in love with the space. Boccadoro was (and is) warm, welcoming, easy to talk to, with a kind of calm that felt contagious. Kirk had a sense that they’d found their people.
“It made my day to do my orientations with Laura,” they said. Before long, they were making sure that the Center provided the same safe space for others that it had instantly offered them. “Losing this space is difficult to process.”
In part, that’s because of how many lives it sustains and improves, they added. A few months into volunteering, Kirk met their current partner, Robin Strange, at a volunteer orientation. The two bonded over a shared love of New Haven, which both called wonderfully, vibrantly weird. As Wednesday afternoon loomed, the two busied themselves tidying up around the center, taking a few moments to cuddle in a large inflated chair before the space closed.
Laura Boccadoro, Sense Kirk, Maggie Goodwin, Orion Arena, Salem McCarthy, and Robin Strange.
Nearby, Salem McCarthy was also still processing the news. Roughly two years ago, McCarthy started volunteering at the Center after graduating from high school. In true nonprofit fashion, her work varied from day to day: she might take out the trash and tidy the space during one volunteer shift, work on event graphics during another, and help build out the organization's annual Pride Month celebrations the next.
Two weeks ago, she joined fellow NHPC staff and interns on the New Haven Green as the city raised a Pride flag in defiance of the Trump Administration’s order to remove one at the Stonewall Monument in New York. It just felt natural to have her there: she's part of the Pride Center's family.
“It’s definitely sad to see the situation unfold,” she said. “I love this place. It’s hard to imagine it not being here.”
Valentine, a master’s of social work student at Quinnipiac University, echoed that grief as she and Herold stepped into what Herold had envisioned as a teen lounge, with stations for arts and crafts, video games, and homework help that were still totally intact, as if young people might barge through the door and fill the room with chatter.
The two took a moment to reminisce: this time last year, Herold was planning the Center’s revived “Pride Prom,” working with artists and collaborators that made the evening shine in glorious detail. for over a year, after interning herself, she worked as the space's youth services coordinator. Now, she has gone into practice as a therapist full-time, working with youth who are between 12 and 24 years old.
Valentine, meanwhile, doesn’t know where she’ll go in hours that were always meant to be spent at the Pride Center—hours that she needs to finish her degree in social work. For the past several months, she’s been offering case management, food assistance, and helping run support and affinity groups. She’s used to being in the space three days a week. Wednesday, she doled out at least a dozen hugs an hour, from clients who walked through the door to fellow interns.
“I’m figuring it out,” she said with a smile, a pair of heart-shaped, rainbow-patterned earrings bobbing as she spoke. Normally on Wednesdays, Valentine looks forward to seeing Ms. D, one of the Center’s most reliable visitors who lives just down the street, and comes often for the pantry. The love is mutual: Ms. D asks after staff members and volunteers, and bakes them fresh bread as a thank you.
When Valentine heard that Ms. D was sick earlier this week, she walked down the block, brought her some food, and a bowl she’d left at the center. Then, with a heavy heart, she broke the news that the Center would be closing, at least temporarily. It was hard, she remembered.
“It’s just people like that—it’s gonna hurt them the most,” Valentine said. She looked to Herold, then to the room, then back to Herold. Before long, the two were talking about the rainbow-pattered ukulele, as if the instrument was a promise that they would see each other again soon.
One room over, longtime volunteer Maggie Goodwin walked through the door, and made a beeline for Valentine, and then Boccadoro. For years, she’s been leading the Rainbow Elders support group, which has grown its footprint so much that people now attend Zoom meetings from out of state. Wednesday, both she and Boccadoro acknowledged that, through deep grief, maybe not all is lost: they are waiting to see what comes out of this transition.
In the immediate future, staff members are trying to step into the breach—and care for themselves at the same time. After closing Wednesday afternoon, Boccadoro planned to bring extra food to DESK, to ensure that items get used in a timely manner, even if they're shelf stable. Just before 3 p.m., with an hour left to go, volunteers were working to figure out where a few extra packs of diapers from the hygiene closet would be most helpful. Mike Sanger, the Center’s support services coordinator, wondered aloud how to make himself most helpful.
All around them, it was as if the rooms hadn’t yet gotten the memo that anything was changing. Shelves of books, the spines snugly packed and color-coded, peeked out onto the wide central hallway with titles from Out In All Directions and The Right To Be to fiction like Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep. An assortment of pride flags hung in bands of bright color on a central wall, over a series of prints by the artist Krikko Obbott. In the community room, inflatable chairs sat beside a long communal table, boxes of pizza still neatly stacked on top. In the clothing closet, racks of cotton and denim waited for people to come in and try items on.
Earnest Russell and Donna Perry.
“There’s nothing like it,” chimed in Donna Perry, who comes by the Center nearly each day for extra groceries and clothes that she can pick up in a judgement-free zone. As a person on a fixed income, she relies on spaces like the Center for items that her monthly budget won’t cover, like milk, fresh produce and shelf-stable products. Even with SNAP, she only receives about $300 a month—not enough to cover the rising cost of food as even pantry staples become prohibitively expensive.
“They give you good quality,” she said. When Perry came with her friend, Earnest Russell, on Wednesday, Boccadoro had offered one of the large, plush pillows that normally sit atop the center’s sofa. With one hour to go before the space closed, Perry weighed a turquoise, anime cat and a lavender-hued unicorn.
“They make you feel well taken care of, no matter who you are.”