The Marley Brothers concert in September 2024. (Credit: Paul Maniaci)
A long-simmering dispute between a historic concert venue and its neighbors erupted in December when the local homeowners’ group filed an injunction to shut down the venue’s popular live shows amid complaints of noise, traffic, and unruly fans.
The Forest Hills Stadium stadium sits in a tree-lined Queens neighborhood next to The West Side Tennis Club, surrounded by Tudor-styled co-op apartment buildings. Until 1977, the stadium was the home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. It was dormant for decades until 2013, when Tiebreaker Productions, its current tenant and operator, rebuilt the space from its crumbling foundation and transformed it into an outdoor music venue. The West Side Tennis Club owns the stadium. The venue now hosts seasonal concerts from spring through fall for up to 14,000 attendees at a time.
For the last year and a half, the stadium has been locked in a legal fight with the homeowners group known as the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation. The group says the stadium has damaged their quality of life with noise, increased traffic, public urination, litter, and other problems.
In October, a Queens County Supreme Court judge threw out five of seven claims in a lawsuit filed against the stadium in 2023 by the FHGC related to zoning and trespassing. The court has not yet addressed public nuisance and quality of life charges.
“The noise from the concerts sends vibrations through residents’ houses for hours at a time, and the crowds make it impossible for residents to enjoy their homes and neighborhood,” said Anthony Oprisiu, president of the FHGC Board of Directors, in a statement issued by the FHGC on Dec. 12.
The stadium fired back at Oprisiu specifically, saying in a statement that his leadership in this battle does not reflect the many thousands of residents it says support the stadium.
“This rogue homeowner’s association is now ignoring prior court orders while asking the Court to shut down the Stadium completely, which would be catastrophic for the Forest Hills economy, destroy local businesses, deprive the Gardens Corp. itself of its largest source of revenue, and put community members out of their jobs,” the statement read.
Not everyone thinks the stadium is a bad actor, including the Forest Hills Community Board 6, and concertgoers from the area. Last fall, as a busy season of live shows wound down, Forest Hills Stadium spokesperson John Kelly gave a tour of recent upgrades to the venue aimed at minimizing the noise.
“The last person you want to fight with is your neighbor,” Kelly said. Kelly, 53, walked in sandals, with purpose, around the perimeter of the stadium on an overcast day. Kelly spoke passionately about the stadium and its connection to the community.
“It’s singular; it’s special,” Kelly said, describing the famous musicians who performed there in the 1960’s, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, as well as the tennis icons who competed there for decades. Performers from the past concert season alone include Neil Young, Hozier, Janelle Monae, Kings of Leon, Pitbull, and the Marley Brothers to name a few.
Kelly peppered his comments with words like “groovy” and “right on.” He called Forest Hills Stadium “a cultural relic” and “something old and vaulted that needs love and care.”
The stadium has been in the community since 1923. When asked about why things have ended up in court with the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation after a previously harmonious relationship, Kelly said the corporation wants more influence in the way the stadium operates by limiting the number of concerts it can host, which in 2024 reached 37 performances. Also, the corporation wants the honorarium it receives from the stadium to be raised from $250,000 every season to $4 million. This number is untenable, said Kelly. So the opposing sides ended up in court when they could not come to terms on these issues.
“I love music. I love concerts,” said a board member of the corporation, who asked to remain anonymous because of the pending litigation.
He said the board is only responding to an increase in the number of live shows and public nuisances caused by them. The number of noise complaints has grown significantly with the number of concerts, the board member said. The penalties are very low, he added, comparing the fines for violating sound limits to a speeding ticket, unlikely to dissuade the stadium from continuing to break the noise ordinance.
Concertgoers gathered at the stadium concourse. (Credit: Paul Maniaci)
The board member also cited the negative impact of increased foot and car traffic in the community, which was not built to handle such an influx of cars. The closure of streets around the stadium to control the crowd flow of thousands of concertgoers has also affected the limited street parking for local residents, he said.
In addition, the Corporation board member said he heard complaints from residents about concertgoers urinating outside the stadium and loitering on private property as they waited for their rides home. These quality-of-life violations prompted the board to take matters to the courts, he said.
Heather Beers-Dimitriadis, 53, chair of Queens Community Board 6 in Forest Hills, said it is not the practice of community boards to tell local businesses how to run things. When asked about how the stadium has responded to residents’ complaints, Beers-Dimitriadis was more positive.
“We work with the stadium and have found them to be very responsive,” she said, adding that the stadium has expanded its staff to deal with these issues.
Beers-Dimitriadis said the stadium has addressed the noise complaints, specifically the thump of bass that reverberated outside of the stadium. It also minimized neighborhood disturbances by implementing a 10 p.m. curfew for shows to conclude, she added. To discourage public urination, the stadium would also allow concertgoers who show up hours before a show to use its restrooms, she said.
The community board has found itself playing the role of mediator in the dispute.
“We have to balance out the feelings of those who think it’s magic versus those who think it’s hell,” Beers-Dimitriadis said.
Beers-Dimitriadis says some local restaurants have told her the stadium has helped them recoup losses from the COVID-19 pandemic by inviting them to be vendors at shows. Also, the stadium has become much more present in the community, helping with cleanups in the neighborhood and donating to local causes, she said. Prior to the current dispute, they were doing similar things behind the scenes, such as paying for the Christmas lights on Austin Street, the main road that cuts through Forest Hills, Beers-Dimitriadis said.
Soundproofing lines the walls of the stadium. (Credit: Paul Maniaci)
Kelly, the spokesperson for Forest Hills Stadium, said the stadium reopened at the behest of New York City during the pandemic so people had an outdoor gathering space. As the interest in the stadium grew, so did the number of concerts. In response to noise complaints, the stadium discovered that sound was emanating from the stairwells, which workers then soundproofed along with the floor access using a special mesh, Kelly said. When one walks through the stairways leading to the open-air amphitheater, the volume noticeably lessens. It becomes muffled.
In order to come to an agreement, Kelly said last fall that a compromise would need to be met on the number of shows allowed, the amount of money paid towards the community honorarium, and enforcement of the 10 p.m. curfew.
Kelly expressed hope that the dispute would be resolved.
“Old things don’t last this long without sustained effort,” he said.
About the author(s)
Paul Maniaci is a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School, who enjoys exploring New York City and spending time with his two young daughters.