The Forest Hills Stadium’s revival as a concert venue has gotten rave and raw reviews alike from the surrounding community.
The West Side Tennis Club, which owns the stadium at 1 Tennis Place, invited neighbors to share feedback on last summer’s Mumford & Sons concert with the company hired to put on shows, Madison House Presents, as it finalizes this summer’s lineup.
Madison House Presents has booked Zac Brown Band, an Atlanta-based folk group, for June 21 and Modest Mouse and Brand New, two indie bands, for Aug. 9. The concert promoters aim to plan up to four more shows this summer.
Close to 70 people packed into Our Lady of Mercy Church Monday to share their thoughts. Complaints ran the gamut, from a “pop-up shop” hawking gear on front lawns to throngs of concert-goers clogging the path to subway stations.
But others spoke passionately about the need to preserve a structure built in 1923 to host the US Open and went on to welcome music giants such as Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand. The city considered landmarking the structure, but decided restoring it would be too expensive.
Mike Luba, of Madison House Presents, said selling roughly 16,000 general admission tickets for the Mumford & Sons concert proved too many. Going forward, he said Madison House Presents would limit admission to roughly 13,000 for seated concerts and 14,000 for standing concerts. An assigned seating system will be used to discourage attendees from arriving early in pursuit of good spots.
Luba said neighbors would be given access to advanced ticket sales and deals.
He noted that a permanent stage would be arriving within weeks. Reinstalled seats, wider aisles and new handrails are also in the works.
“It was a good learning experience for us all,” Luba said of the Mumford & Sons concert. “It’s a little tricky getting a 100-year-old stadium back up and running.”
So it wasn't landmarked because LPC decided that restoring it was too expensive, but it's being restored now, so why not landmark it?
My favorite line of the piece, from Karen Koslowitz: “Mumford & Sons, this isn’t really my kind of music. I like Jay-Z. And my grandson just e-mailed me today that July 11 they’re going to be at the Giants’ stadium, so Jay-Z’s not coming here.”
6 comments:
I got 99 problems, and my Councilwoman's dumb.
So USTA moved from Forest Hills to Flushing Meadows Corona Park some years ago, and Dinkins at the time gave them park space to build two (or is it three?) new stadiums and parking areas.
What a jackass. Jay-Z couldn't write music to save his life. The guy would be worthless without a computer and sound engineer.
So a pro-fem like Koslowitz enjoys the music of an admitted drug dealer who calls women "b-----s" and "h--s" in his lyrics?
This should be a good thing but it won't and can't for 2 reasons:
1.The music today is awful,there are no true great songwriters and artists like dylan or streisand or event the talking heads who were I think the last band that played there.Whats dominating the airwaves and internet are boring soulless bands with no edge or balls,and narcissistic rappers who rhyme about wealth and luxury that their fans will never attain.And that shit that sings that song happy.And with attention spans getting shorter,another born to run will never be written
2.The promoters today are too greedy and cannot be trusted,they overbooked that lousy hipster band scumford and scums and the spillover after the shows are going to annoy the residents there even further.
Its a shame it had to be abandoned for that monstrosity in flushing meadows.If anything,Dinkins practically started all this nonsense with wasting tax dollars on new arenas leading to the new yankee and mets stadiums.what an asshole.
last anons:remember when jay z stabbed a person in public,because I do
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/78056/jay-z-gets-3-years-probation-in-stabbing-case
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