West Side Tennis Club dispute over noise, street closures threatens summer concert series at Forest Hills Stadium

A long-running dispute over noise and quality of life issues surrounding summer concerts at the Forest Hills Stadium that used to host the U.S. Open has entered a new phase, jeopardizing planned summer appearances by jam band Phish and other acts.

A Wednesday letter from the commander of NYPD’s Legal Bureau to the West Side Tennis Club and events producer Tiebreaker Productions said it could not issue sound amplification permits for events at the club’s 12,000-seat Forest Hills Stadium "until further notice" because it does not have permission to close privately owned streets around the club to do necessary crowd control.

Streets around the Queens club, which bills itself as the oldest tennis center in America, are owned by Forest Hills Gardens Corp., the nonprofit corporation that manages the Forest Hills Gardens community.

An NYPD spokesperson said in an email that the department hoped for an "appropriate compromise: between the corporation and the club," adding that the department was not directly involved in the dispute.

In a statement, the corporation board said it was "united in its desire to resolve this situation so that concerts can proceed in a manner that respects the rights, safety, and well-being of the community," but noted that the NYPD letter followed two years of concert litigation.

That litigation includes lawsuits filed by the corporation and a civic association against the club and a suit by the club and Tiebreaker against the corporation. Some claims against the club have been dismissed, but some of the litigation is ongoing.

"It's not just the noise, it's the vibration," said Jean Hahn, a neighbor who lives about a block from the stadium and said she supported the lawsuits. "I actually get nauseous sometimes." She said the concert days started with daytime sound checks at unpredictable times. The concerts were usually from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. but one continued to 11:30 p.m. and the music was often accompanied by the powerful odor of marijuana, she said. 

This year's stadium calendar lists 12 events. There were 38 last year. 

In a brief phone interview, stadium general manager Jason Brandt said "we fully intend to have a robust concert season bringing entertainment, jobs and joy to Queens." Akiva Shapiro, a lawyer for the tennis club and Tiebreaker, said in an email, "The Forest Hills Stadium continues to move forward in preparation for the 2025 season despite the campaign waged by a vocal NIMBY minority that has tried and tried again to shut the stadium down and kill the music."

But in a statement, Andy Court, president of Concerned Citizens of Forest Hills, a community group that says it advocates for "reasonable restrictions" on events at the stadium, said the Forest Hills Stadium and West Side Tennis Club "brought this upon themselves by repeatedly violating the noise code and refusing to agree to reasonable restrictions on these events."

According to the group, which has sued the stadium and the tennis club, city inspectors issued summonses for noise violations on 11 out of 13 visits during concerts last year.

Some of this season’s events have been scheduled on school nights, though some parents have complained the noise makes studying and sleeping hard, the group said in an email.

Lawyers for the club and Tiebreaker, however, have argued in court filings that Forest Hills Gardens Corp.’s campaign amounted to a shakedown attempt. They asserted in a 2023 lawsuit that the corporation's demands for $4 million to allow concertgoers to use one of its streets that year — $100,000 per concert for 20 concerts, $200,000 thereafter — proved it had "no legitimate interest in preventing any alleged nuisance from the concerts, but instead seeks to collect millions of dollars from the concerts for its own benefit."