I moved into Oak Park Manor in August 2009. Having lived three years at Quail Hill Apartments in…read moreWalnut Creek, I had come to respect and appreciate their management company, M&L Properties. M&L took over Oak Park Manor in 2009. This three-building, two-story apartment complex sits on a quiet and attractive street, right next to a Safeway flanked with towering eucalyptus, pine and redwood trees. Just a few blocks west of the Pleasant Hill public library, the apartment buildings are far enough away from highway 680 that you don't hear the roar of highway traffic. Yet it takes only five minutes to drive, or 25 minutes to walk, to the Pleasant Hill BART station -- and less than ten minutes to drive onto 680.
My one-bedroom apartment, which measures about 800 square feet, has an unusually spacious bedroom and living room, along with a large balcony. My bedroom has only one window, which does not let in as much natural light as I'd like. The central air-conditioning and heating work smoothly. The wall-to-wall carpeting is soft and very sensitive to denting from furniture or appliances sitting on it. On my second inspection of the apartment I noticed the carpet had several dents resembling claw marks gouged into it -- probably from some wheeled appliance that maintenance men had left on it for too long. The management agreed to replace the carpet before I moved in. They also gave me free rent for the first month, the going offer at that time.
The live-in managers, Mandy and Derek, while pleasant and compassionate people, proved woefully disorganized. When I applied for a free storage locker they did not follow through, complaining they had inherited a confusing mess in which they did not know which tenants were renting which lockers, and which in fact were vacant. Derek responded very slowly to my requests for basic repairs such as a fluorescent bulb replacement, and seemed easily distracted from his tasks.
In December 2009, M&L Properties fired Mandy and Derek. They replaced them temporarily with Leslie and Mike, the resident managers at Sunnyvale Terrace Apartments, which M&L had also bought recently. Applying careful record-keeping, Leslie soon got control of the storage-locker situation and issued me my free locker. Mike responded quickly and skillfully to my repair requests.
In spring 2010 a new couple, Asia and Kendall, moved in and took the reins as live-in managers. Friendly and hard-working, they've displayed excellent communication and technical skills. Kendall responds within one hour to my repair requests. He and Asia tolerate, with good humor, the lazy and irresponsible behavior of certain tenants who dump their unwanted furniture into the garbage-bin area; leave large cardboard boxes outside the recycling bin instead of cutting them up and placing the pieces inside the bin; and leave the bin and dumpster lids open, letting crows invade the dumpsters and letting water flood in during the rainy season. Asia and Kendall uncomplainingly clean up the messes left by such tenants.
In October 2009, while Mandy and Derek were still the resident managers, a construction crew started rebuilding the balconies, including mine. They did what seemed a nice job, applying an initial coat of white paint to the new wooden railing around the balcony. However, they stopped their work on the balconies for several months, allowing the winter rains to pound the plastic tarp loosely covering the wooden beams stacked beyond my building. They finally resumed work rebuilding the balconies and finished the job (except for the painting) by the next spring. In this second round of balcony work, they added vertical beam support underneath my balcony and installed metal braces on the joints.
In Sept. 2010 I called the Pleasant Hill Building Department (925-671-5200) and asked Mike, the official who answered, whether his department had halted construction, and why. Mike told me the building department had indeed "red-tagged" (halted) the balcony construction, because the crew did not have the required permits. Then, after the apartment management obtained the permits and resumed construction, the building department ruled the units in compliance in August 2010.
Oak Park Manor has plenty of parking space: reserved carport spaces for tenants and some non-reserved spaces, plus ample street parking. Also, M&L Properties offers tenants who have lived in an apartment for at least two years, free scrub-cleaning of their carpet by a professional service.