NYC Parks is preparing to issue a Request for Proposals for a private LLC to enclose part of Astoria Park's tennis courts under a seasonal inflatable bubble.
In plain terms: a for-profit company would take over a piece of public outdoor recreation — already one of the scarcest things in New York City — and run it as a paid business. Here's what that has actually looked like at other NYC parks.
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Queens and North Brooklyn are not short on indoor winter tennis. Within a short trip of Astoria, players can already pay to play under a roof at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, the McCarren Tennis Center in Williamsburg, Stadium Tennis Center in the Bronx, Cunningham Tennis Center, and several private clubs in between. The bubbled, paid-indoor option is well covered.
What's increasingly scarce is the opposite: a public, year-round, outdoor park that stays open and free off-season. Astoria Park is one of the only major NYC parks whose courts have not been handed to a private bubble — and it has stayed that way precisely to preserve a different option for the neighborhood. We don't need another bubble. We need to save the parks that aren't bubbled.
Today, playing at Astoria Park costs $100 for a season permit — and that gets you onto a court for the entire outdoor season. Outside the season, the courts are free.
Under a bubble model, an hour on a covered court at McCarren runs $80–$100 per hour. Private lessons go from $193 to $300/hour. For a family or a casual player, that's the difference between "I'll head over for some winter exercise" and "we don't play in the winter."
Prime-time slots disappear quickly because the vendor prioritizes group classes that generate up to $440 an hour per court. A 4-person clinic at $110/head brings in $440/hour — versus a $100 public-rental — so the schedule fills with classes first and public rentals second. Booking opens 7 days in advance, and the few public slots that remain (after the operator has scheduled with clinics and season-long blocks) are typically gone within seconds.
The result: a paid public court that, in practice, isn't available to most of the public.
The official NYC Parks tennis permit season runs from the first Saturday in April through the Sunday before Thanksgiving. McCarren's bubble goes up in mid-October and stays up through mid/late-April — roughly 6-7 months. That overlaps with about three months of the official outdoor season, including most of October and April, when conditions are often perfectly playable outdoors.
Officials describe the bubble as covering only 8 of the 14 courts, leaving 6 free and outdoors. On paper, that's reassuring. On a map, it isn't.
Based on the proposed footprint, the 3 west-side courts would be blocked off by the bubble's walls (due to the need to leave headroom for players at the baseline). It remains TBD if and how the 3-east side courts could remain accessible. In addition, the admin structures, check-in trailers, and heating equipment for the bubble — the kind of build-out that always spills past the inflatable itself — would create even more disruption and take even more space from Astoria Park.
And even if every one of those 6 courts stayed fully accessible: in October, November, April, and on the warmer days in winter, 6 courts won't be remotely enough for a neighborhood that today plays on all 14.
The red box marks the 8 courts (4–11) that would be enclosed.
The conversation so far has been about access and price. But a structure of this scale can't drop into our park without taking the environment around it with it.
Inflatable structures need clearance and anchoring outside the playing surface. Based on the proposed footprint, that means cutting full-grown shared trees just outside the fence lines of courts 4, 7, 8, and 11, plus the mature row of trees between courts 1–3 and courts 4–7 — today the only meaningful shade on the center courts. These trees can't be replaced — and they aren't part of the bubble's reported "footprint" the way the courts are.
The wildlife goes with them. Among other impressive birds perching and hunting around the park, a pair of red-tailed hawks has nested for years on the RFK (Triborough) Bridge directly above the tennis courts (above court 8), raising chicks each spring. The bubble would cause a major disruption to their environment in early spring: industrial blowers running 24/7 to keep the structure inflated, exterior lighting, and a rigid white dome rising into their flight path. These are well-documented displacement triggers, and once a pair abandons a site, they don't typically come back.
Fort Greene Park is currently resurfacing all 6 of its courts at a cost of $348,000 — fully funded through years of community fundraising and USTA grants for public-court refurbishment.
McCarren's courts were resurfaced in 2010 through the USTA / Amex Fresh Courts Initiative, a grant program designed specifically for public courts.
Mayor Mamdani has committed to increased investment in NYC parks. Dedicated city funding for court resurfacing should be pursued before turning to a 15-year private concession.
Even if every one of these public-first alternatives turns out not to be viable, that still isn't an argument for privatization. The community would almost certainly rather leave the courts exactly as they are — public, free, green and vital — than hand them over to a for-profit operator for seven months out of every year. Doing nothing is a legitimate option. Doing this isn't.
The RFP hasn't been issued yet — which means neighborhood pressure still changes the outcome. Pick one. Pick all four. Each takes a few minutes. Tag #KeepAstoriaPublic on social so we can track and amplify the conversation.
Signatures show NYC Parks the scale of neighborhood concern before the RFP is finalized. The bigger the number, the harder this is to push through quietly. Takes 30 seconds.
Elected officials and the local community board respond to constituent volume more than almost anything else. We've drafted a template email you can copy, personalize, and send in two minutes — to your council member, your state reps, NYC Parks, and CB1.
On social media, use #KeepAstoriaPublic so we can track and amplify every post, and tag @Cb1Queens — the Queens Community Board 1 that represents Astoria — plus your council and assembly members so they see it land in their feed.
The best solutions come from the community itself. Before the city hands our park to a private company for 15 years, we want to hear from you — and to bring real neighborhood stories into the public comment record.
Email us at astoriatennisnyc@gmail.com:
Most Astorians don't know this RFP exists. Word-of-mouth in the courts, group chats, building lobbies, and local Facebook groups is how this fight gets won. Send the link to three people who play tennis and three who care about public green space.
We've made printable flyers for cafes, bulletin boards, lobbies, and the courts themselves — in color and ink-saver black-and-white. Print a stack and post a few.