By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-23 23:42:19 | Updated at 2025-03-25 19:28:14
1 day ago
Forest Hills Stadium was told there would be no music this summer as negotiations with neighbors fed up with concert noise hit a brick wall, The Post has learned.
The iconic arena in the heart of a sleepy Queens enclave was denied its new sound amplification permits last week following a series of lawsuits from angry residents who said their lives have been upended by increasingly loud concerts blaring in their backyard, an NYPD Legal Bureau letter of notice shows.
The permits were denied when the NYPD was caught in the middle of the longstanding feud between the sprawling West Side Tennis Club and the Forest Hills Garden Corporation — when the FHGC denied the city access to a series of private roads surrounding the venue.
Legal Bureau Inspector William Gallagher told the tennis club that without access to those roads the NYPD would be unable to manage public safety around the stadium, and that the city had no choice but to revoke the concert permits.
It means that, for the moment, the 13 shows currently booked for Forest Hill’s summer season will not be happening – unless the tennis club and its neighbors are able to reach an agreement on the noise problem before the season kicks off with its first show on May 31, the NYPD noted.
“It is our hope that the West Side Tennis Club and FHGC come together and reach a solution to this issue so that the NYPD may resume issuance of sound amplification permits,” Gallagher wrote in his letter.
Forest Hills residents are chalking the development up as a win.
“This is a sign that the police and City Hall are starting to realize how out-of-control the situation at the stadium has been,” Concerned Citizens of Forest Hills president Andy Court told The Post.
“The Forest Hills Stadium and the West Side Tennis Club brought this upon themselves by repeatedly violating the noise code and refusing to agree to reasonable restrictions on these events. They’ve been acting like they are above the law.”
Court is part of a crew of fed-up Forest Hills residents whose patience with the outdoor stadium ran out last year after 11 of its 36 summer concerts exceeded local decibel limits.
Neighbors have previously told The Post they spent the summer enduring rattling windows, walls vibrating with such intensity that cracks develop in the plaster, and even alleged psychological torment that has left schoolkids with flagging grades and elders forced to remove their hearing aids to find a shred of peace.
“This is an open-air stadium that is smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood, it butts up to homes, it butts up to buildings — that music is being pumped into people’s living rooms for hours at a time,” said Sandra Mandell, who has lived in a home a half mile from the stadium for 10 years.
“Imagine what somebody that lives right outside of the concerts hears?” she said. “I know people who have tiles vibrate off the roof.”
She and her neighbors said the venue — which has hosted the likes of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra over the years — didn’t used to be a problem when it held little more than a dozen shows a year, but that since the pandemic those dozens have tripled.
“That is like an unprecedented level of growth. It’s unsustainable for the neighborhood,” said Mandell, who described the current schedule as “off the rails.”
“I think a commercial operation of this scale does not belong in a residential neighborhood. The impacts are too great.”
After filing a series of lawsuits against the stadium, the Forest Hills Garden Corporation (FHGC) finally blocked the NYPD closing a series of privately-owned streets near the venue — preventing safe organization of the area during concerts, and leaving police no choice but to deny permitting to hold concerts, the NYPD’s letter read.
Despite the drastic move, the FHGC said they aren’t looking to end what has become a beloved fixture for many New Yorkers — but just come to a reasonable solution that keeps its neighbors happy, too.
“We remain committed to working with all stakeholders to find a balanced solution that addresses concert impacts while respecting our community,” FHGC president Anthony Oprisiu said in a statement.
The Tennis Club — which has previously brushed off complaints about noise, pointing out that last year each of its concerts ended by 10 p.m. — called word of the permit denial “rumors,” and said it hadn’t heard anything from the NYPD on the matter.
“Neither the Stadium’s owner nor operator have received any communication from the NYPD concerning sound permits, which have always been granted to the Stadium upon request,” said Akiva Shapiro, attorney for West Side Tennis Club.
“Because nothing has changed, the NYPD has not raised any concerns with the Stadium directly, and the City would risk significant liability if it were to abruptly shut the Stadium down, we can only assume that no such final decision has been made,” Shapiro added. “We question where these rumors are coming from, find them extremely troubling, and are demanding answers from the highest levels of the Adams administration.”
