West Side Tennis Club dispute over noise, street closures could threaten 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 tennis club 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 Mar. 19 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 Corporation, the nonprofit corporation that manages the Forest Hills Garden 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 there had been two years of litigation.

Tennis club management did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but in a brief phone interview, Jason Brandt, the stadium’s general manager said “we fully intend to have a robust concert season bringing entertainment, jobs and joy to Queens.” Akiva Shapiro of Gibson Dunn, counsel to the Forest Hills Stadium):

“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,” he said.

In a statement, Andy Court, president of Concerned Citizens of Forest Hills, a community group which says it advocates for “reasonable restrictions” on events at the stadium, said the NYPD letter was a “sign that the police and City Hall are starting to realize how out-of-control the situation at the stadium has been … 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.”

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 summer’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 Corporation’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.”