A group of homeowners near the Forest Hills Stadium in Queens is suing the city, alleging it illegally takes over their private streets to facilitate concerts at the venue, where nearby residents have complained for years about excessive noise and disruptions.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday, the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation said the NYPD erects barricades, closes the streets to vehicles and directs thousands of people to “physically invade” the homeowners association’s property on their way to the concerts without approval to do so.
The suit argues the NYPD’s actions violate the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits state seizure of public property without due process and just compensation.
“At this point, the concert promoter is earning millions and millions from these concerts, but the people who live in Forest Hills Gardens, who are really bearing the brunt of these events on a day-to-day basis, have received nothing,” said Katie Rosenfeld, an attorney representing the Forest Hills Garden Corporation.
But the NYPD told Gothamist Tuesday it doesn’t use the association’s private streets at all, unless there’s an emergency — instead, patrolling the public streets around the stadium and doing crowd control around events.
The suit comes after years of noise complaints against the open-air 13,000 capacity stadium, which was a marquee tennis arena before it was a concert stage. Until 2022, the homeowners' association had granted the stadium operator licenses to conduct operations on its streets to hold some concerts.
But in 2023, the association stopped issuing those permits, citing the loud, disruptive concerts.
The concerts continued, without the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation’s approval to use its streets. Then, in March of this year, the NYPD said it wouldn’t issue noise permits for 2025 unless it could secure a safety plan with the association’s cooperation.
Soon after, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards announced he had brokered a deal that would allow the concerts. But the lawsuit said the association wasn’t part of those negotiations, and that private security authorized by the NYPD continues to use the association’s property.
“It’s hard to convey what it's like to have over 10,000 people walk in front of your apartment building,” said Matthew Mandell, chair of the association’s law committee. “Roads are barricaded, school buses can't get through, deliveries can't get through, elderly residents can't get dropped off, picked up … The scale of the operation has gotten entirely out of proportion to the neighborhood.”
In one instance mentioned in the lawsuit, the association alleges NYPD refused an elderly resident’s taxi through to her apartment entrance, and it instead dropped her off several blocks away. She fell and was injured while dragging large luggage over a far distance through dense crowds, according to the suit.
The lawsuit asks the city for compensation for the use of the private streets. Mandell said he hopes the city negotiate new terms for the operations in the neighborhood.
“If you want to use the property, you buy it or you rent it, or you license it,” Mandell said. “We don't even get notice. We find out that our property is being seized when the concert is announced.”
The city’s law and police departments have not responded to an email seeking comment on Tuesday.
