By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
The Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, which represents homeowners in the historic Queens neighborhood, has settled a lawsuit it brought last year against the city over how the NYPD polices the area during events at Forest Hills Stadium. <\/p>\n
Reached with the city on March 16, the settlement requires the city to pay only $150,000 to the FHGC, which owns the land the stadium sits on. The settlement also requires the police to work more with locals while patrolling the area around the stadium, which FHGC has separately sued multiple times over the past several years.<\/p>\n
The settlement marks a substantial shift in the relationship between the stadium and its neighbors, who have been in constant litigation with the venue and its operator, the West Side Tennis Club, over claims that noise from concerts at the stadium violates city rules and that it fails to control the crowds that descend on the private community dozens of times a year. <\/p>\n
However, FHGC\u2019s new board, who were elected overwhelmingly in December, ran almost entirely on their intentions to put an end to the lawsuits. <\/p>\n
The federal suit against the city is the first to go. <\/p>\n
The settlement will require the city to make the paltry $150,000 payment.<\/p>\n
It will also require the local 112th Precinct to consult with the FHGC board about security arrangements on FHGC\u2019s property regarding street closures, resident access and rideshare pickup areas. The NYPD will maintain the final say over security decisions, according to the settlement. <\/p>\n
The suit was first brought in October 2025, and argued that the city\u2019s closure and use of the neighborhood\u2019s private streets to manage concert crowds infringed on homeowners\u2019 right to access and use their property as they saw fit. <\/p>\n
\u201cEach time the City closes FHGC\u2019s private streets and directs 13,000 people to physically invade its property to access concerts at the Forest Hills Stadium, FHGC\u2019s members\u2019 lives are dramatically disrupted,\u201d the lawsuit read. \u201cResidents cannot access their homes, concertgoers engage in public alcohol consumption and substance use, public urination, and littering on FHGC\u2019s property and overpowering noise seeps into neighborhood homes from the open-air concerts, resulting in chronic violations of the City\u2019s noise code.\u201d <\/p>\n
But members of the newly elected board did not consider the issues to be as severe as their predecessors thought. In general, they believed the stadium was a community benefit and not the nuisance the previous board had made it out to be. Above all, they were sick and tired of paying legal fees. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe largest growing concern beyond everything else, is the spending on legal fees currently, which is approaching a million dollars of the community budget at this point,\u201d said JP Evangelista, a leader of the insurgency that defeated the old board, told the Eagle last year. <\/p>\n
Members of the new board told the Eagle they could not comment on specifics regarding the settlement, but said they were happy with the outcome. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach The Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, which represents homeowners in the historic Queens neighborhood, has settled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-179702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}