Forest Hills Gardens sues city in federal court — Queens Daily Eagle

By Ryan Schwach

A group of Queens residents is moving their ongoing fight against Forest Hills Stadium to federal court with a new lawsuit directed at the city.

Forest Hills Gardens, a privately owned neighborhood in the Central Queens community that owns the property where the stadium sits, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the city on constitutional grounds.

The residents – who are also pursuing an ongoing suit against the stadium’s operator, West Side Tennis Club, and concert promoter, Tiebreaker Productions, in state court – argued in their new suit that the city’s closure and use of the neighborhood’s private streets to manage concert crowds infringes on their right to access and use their property as they see fit.

“The City of New York [is] taking its private property without compensation,” said attorney Katie Rosenfeld, who is representing FHGC.

In a 46-page complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York, the neighborhood group argued that by continuing to close off private streets within FHGC to manage large stadium crowds, the city is harming locals’ ability to use their property.

“Each time the City closes FHGC’s private streets and directs 13,000 people to physically invade its property to access concerts at the Forest Hills Stadium, FHGC’s members’ lives are dramatically disrupted,” the lawsuit reads. “Residents cannot access their homes, concertgoers engage in public alcohol consumption and substance use, public urination, and littering on FHGC’s property and overpowering noise seeps into neighborhood homes from the open-air concerts, resulting in chronic violations of the City’s noise code.”

The suit claims that those rights afforded to the property owners of FHGC are enshrined in the constitution.

“In this particular case, the government is facilitating this private concert promoter’s operations at the stadium, and it’s taking rights that belong to the Forest Hills Gardens community, their property rights, and it’s not compensating them for those rights,” said Rosenfeld.

The City Law Department told the Eagle it is reviewing the suit. City Hall declined to comment.

Forest Hills Stadium declined to comment on the litigation, which was first reported by the New York Post.

This suit marks the latest development in a years-long fight between Forest Hills Stadium, which was built in 1923 as a tennis venue, and locals who feel that the stadium’s increase in concerts in recent years has greatly harmed their quality of life.

Some residents of FHGC have argued publicly and through litigation that the number of concerts hosted by the popular venue has become untenable.

In September, the Eagle reported that the city Department of Environmental Protection issued six noise code violations to the stadium, including one for each day of the All Things Go music festival which took place at the stadium.

“September was the worst month ever,” said Matt Mandell, the volunteer legal chair at FHGC and a resident. “With the start of school, it was just very disruptive.”

DEP said that agency inspectors attended 12 concerts during the 2025 concert season, nine of which resulted in violations.

In all of 2024, DEP conducted 22 inspections and issued 10 violations.

Mandell said the federal suit is just another attempt to address the disruption.

“We’ve really tried everything,” he said. We filed in state court, our residents are calling 311, we invited mediation. We’ve spoken to our elected officials, the city agencies.”

“If we didn’t file this lawsuit, we would just lose our rights to this property,” he added.

Prior to 2023, FHGC had an agreement with the stadium that allowed the NYPD to carry out street closures and police the area during events.

In 2023, FHGC decided not to issue any further licenses for concerts at the stadium because “the concerts had simply grown too disruptive, too loud, too frequent, and out of keeping with the neighborhood’s residential character,” according to the lawsuit.

The stadium continued to hold concerts – 32 in 2023 and 38 in 2024.

Earlier this year, summer concerts at Forest Hills Stadium were briefly in doubt going into the season after the city and NYPD denied the stadium crucial permitting, due to FHGC choosing not to give them permission to close the privately-owned streets.

“Due to Forest Hills Garden Corporation’s failure to grant the NYPD permission to close the privately-owned streets surrounding the Forest Hills Stadium, the NYPD cannot issue sound amplification permits for events at the Stadium until further notice,” NYPD Legal Bureau Inspector William Gallagher said in a March 19 letter. “NYPD-issued permits are necessary for the lawful use or operation of any sound device or apparatus in, on, near, or adjacent to any public street, park or place.”

However, in April, the stadium brokered a deal with Queens Borough President Donovan Richards that cleared the way for concerts to continue. FHGC claims they were left out of those discussions.

Richards has been an ardent supporter of the stadium and said through a spokesperson on Tuesday that he hopes the two sides can work out their issues soon.

“As he has said repeatedly for years, Borough President Richards knows Forest Hills Stadium to be both a world-class hub of entertainment and a vital generator of economic activity for the surrounding community — things that Queens has long deserved and continues to receive through the summer concert series,” said spokesperson Christopher Barca. “Just as he has done for years, he continues to work with stadium leadership, city officials and Forest Hills residents in delivering tangible solutions to any legitimate concerns that have arisen.”

In the new lawsuit, FHGC argued their short-lived attempt to prevent the NYPD from closing their streets is evidence the city knows that it is operating out of legal bounds.

“The NYPD’s March 19, 2025, letter constituted an admission that – for the prior two years when the City had operated the NYPD Private Street Closure Program over FHGC’s objection and without any license from FHGC authorizing the concerts, and without paying any compensation to FHGC – it had violated FHGC’s rights,” the lawsuit reads.

Only a few concerts remain on the schedule at Forest Hills Stadium this year.

The next show will come this weekend, on Oct. 18, when pop-band Disclosure is set to perform.