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Sunday,
June 2, 2002 (Revised 6/3/02)
CHOLI
Closes Its Doors
By Louis Trapani
On
May 28, 2002, Community House of Long Island (CHOLI) released
an announcement stating that it will closing its doors "immediately."
The organization will be seeking a new location because it
could no longer justify spending $3500 a month plus utilities
for the building they had been renting on Long Island Avenue
in Deer Park, NY. The new Board of Directors of CHOLI will
be spearheading a search for a new location and will continue
in the meantime with various events. Meanwhile, the groups
that had been meeting there will now need to seek out new
locations to call home for their meetings.
Founded
in 1998, shortly after PWAC-LI (People With AIDS Coalition
- Long Island) moved from Lindenhurst to Freeport and in the
process various groups lost their meeting location in Lindenhurst
which they had been using in the PWAC-LI building. CHOLI quickly
gained support of the community and secured the Deer Park
location by November of 1999. Previously, another organization,
the Long Island Center had been seeking a location for a GLBT
center on Long Island without obtaining a space. The original
March 2000 grand opening celebration of CHOLI never really
took place due to local town zoning issues that needed to
be resolved. Instead, a dedication ceremony took place that
following summer.
The
original mission of CHOLI was as follows: "The mission
of Community House of Long Island is to obtain and operate
a physical site where all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
people and their supporters can meet in fellowship to promote
the cultural, economic, social, and physical welfare of our
community through prideful affirmation, community, fun, education,
and service."
Since
the announcement, there has been an ongoing community open
discussion taking place on the LI
Pride Discussion eGroup. It is there which various concerns
and viewpoints relating to this latest announcement are being
expressed and debated within the Long Island GLBT community.
Although
the announcement stated that they would be closing their doors
immediately, there were at least two functions that took place
at the Deer Park location on Saturday, June 1. Sources indicate
that the Deer Park facility will remain open until the end
of June, despite the announcement stating otherwise. Meanwhile,
on Sunday, June 2 marks CHOLI's first Nassau event with its
picnic at Hempstead Lake State Park, in West Hempstead.
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