Concerned Jericho Parents Donate To Sunrise Association

On Nov. 21, a $35,000 check was handed over to the Sunrise Association by Concerned Jericho Parents.
“The organization is really remarkable,” said Jennifer Vartanov, a founding member of Concerned Jericho Parents. She’s also the vice president of the Jericho School District Board of Education. “It’s remarkable, all the people that are part of the organization that give their time to help out with this worthy cause for children battling this illness and they just help to provide whatever hope and happiness and fun they can to these children. There’s not enough good things we can say about this organization.”
The Sunrise Association, a non-profit based in Oceanside, provides inclusive summer day camps, year-round programs and in-hospital recreational activities to children with cancer and their siblings, all for free. And Concerned Jericho Parents formed out of an initiative that begun in 2020 to successively stop a homeless shelter from being developed in the former Hampton Inn. The organization claimed the developers attempted to illegally develop it without input from the community.
““This particular money was raised by the community for a variety of purposes and things that the community was concerned with, with the understanding that whatever was left over, would be donated to a worthy charity like Sunrise,” said Marc Albert of Concerned Jericho Parents.
A GoFundMe page, a website used to raise money for personal, community or other types of causes, was started in 2020 to help cover the legal expenses to challenge the development of the shelter. It was announced on Aug. 3, 2020 that leftover funds out of the $87,687 raised would be donated to a charitable organization or other association that would greatly benefit from the funds in the local community.
“[Concerned Jericho Parents] was an organization that was really spearheaded by
Jennifer and myself to deal with various issues the community had and to be advocates for the community and for our constituents that really make up the families of Jericho and the Jericho School District,” said Albert.
More About Concerned Jericho Parents
In September of 2020, a Nassau County judge halted plans for a homeless shelter at the former site of the Hampton Inn on Jericho Turnpike in Jericho. The Sept. 22 preliminary injunction, granted by Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Diamond, cited the developer’s failure to obtain permits and violations of zoning laws.
The Town of Oyster Bay issued a stop-work order against the contractor in August of that year, and later filed a temporary restraining order, which Justice Diamond issued.
The injunction followed a series of protests against the project organized by the group Concerned Jericho Parents. Protesters said the money for the project should instead be used to find a more permanent solution for the homeless families and claim the project went ahead without public notice.
In the spring, the plans for the shelter officially ended.
So what is the fate of that building? An application was submitted to the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency on Nov. 8, 2022 requesting financial assistance to create student housing for New York Institute of Technology Old Westbury students in the former hotel.
—Cody Sullivan contributed to this story.