Located in the Town Square of Skokie, these are beautiful, newly built apartments and condominiums…read more They are very spacious and well-kept spaces. All the spaces have little balconies. The area is wonderful -- everything is nearby, many places are walking distance. The building staff and tenants are both very pleasant to work with. These buildings have their own designated parking lot, so parking is never a problem. And the train station is only a few minutes away too. A wonderful place to live in Skokie!

Optima Woods trilogy is absolutely outstanding. Shayda is remarkable. She is so professional and so…read more Jason is absolutely wonderful. The team is fabulous every time I go in there. I always see Shayda and she's so professional. She takes care of everything that I need right away. Everything is always handled that day TIME efficient everything is so incredibly professional. I'm so grateful that I have such an amazing management team always taking care of me and all the other people living here!

HORRIBLE management company and HOA. Ignores resident feedback and requests, selectively enforces…read morerules, and have allowed the buildings to fall into early stages of disrepair. Bathrooms are constantly flooding into the floor below due to shoddy building materials that are requiring costly fixes. Theft, HVAC, and cleanliness are *constant* problems.

Location: 5 stars. Downtown Evanston. Close to the train…read morestation, NU campus, and groceries. Maintenance: 5 stars. Shout out of George who is exceptionally professional and nice. Apartment condition: 1 star Don't believe their over photoshopped pictures on Zillow if you are renting from out of town. Persistent rat problem (see images of maintenance work orders in winters 2022 and 2023). Our unit is on the 1st floor but the building has a pretty tall basement level. George tried to help by putting rat trap but couldn't really fix it without real effort from the company. Leaking radiators (see images of damaged floor). Triggered my mold allergies. They also appear to be painted with lead paint and are chipping. Also they turn on and off randomly regardless of the actual temperature. Old and super squeaky doors and floors, which might be okay to some people but annoying to light sleepers - you might wake up in the middle of the night when your roommate opens the bedroom door and walks to the bathroom. Dirty/broken windows I don't know when was the last time they cleaned the windows... I tried to do it myself when I just moved in but had to give up cuz the dirt is just too thick and disgusting. Some of the windows/screens must be broken cuz we kept finding huge flies getting inside the apartment while all windows were closed. Managers: 0 stars Unethical and irresponsible liars: BJB agreed to let us sublease our apartment when moving out, we even found tenants to replace us. They then ignored our emails about this to tell us "we have found someone to move in at the end of your lease" - forcing us to pay for the remainder of our lease despite us finding a replacement (which is possibly a lie because that new person conveniently "lives abroad" and signed the lease within a day without even taking a video tour). This is highly indicative of this company. According to Illinois law, landlords are legally required to make a significant effort to find a new tenant as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of rent they lose when current tenants leave early. The BJB team did not market the unit at all, but made a convenient lie so that they can get a month of rent for free, rather than letting me find someone to take over the lease. This is what people call unethical and toxic landlord behavior. When we first moved in, they rented us an indoor parking spot without telling us how challenging it is to park there - the garage is extremely narrow and every car parking there had bad scratches. We had to cancel it immediately and informed them within our first week - but the manager insisted we didn't inform them fast enough and had us pay for an additional month of parking fee. BJB Evanston. I had to confront the upstairs neighbors myself to get a quiet night, many times, because the manager did nothing after promising that they would take action. The upstairs neighbors would play soccer in the living room... There were also unclaimed big packages stuffed in the tiny entrance/mail area for months. I honestly don't know what the managers are up to. I've never met them in person my entire time here (2+ years)...... Rent: Increases at least 4% every year and reaches almost $2000 now for a 2b1b.

When we planned to move from Honolulu, HI to Chicago, we searched for apartments ready to move in…read more BJB Evanston popped up in the search. We moved in on April 2022 to 6701 N Glenwood Ave. (Mailing address 1347 W Columbia) Decent area. Decent apartment. However, sometimes during the night, we heard someone using our buzzer to get in the building. The scary thing centers around this person aggressively pounding on the main entrance door. We felt the pounding all the way up the 3rd floor. The walls shook. Needless to say, no wonder the person living there prior to us moved out. At times, we could smell the cigarette smoke around the stairs. Granted, we're not supposed to smoke in the building. Once my dog and I heard someone trying to push in the door. Luckily my dog started to bark defensively. That person left. I wonder at times. Management likes to receive money. They hardly return our calls. Nor does management really care about security or safety of their residents.

Another one of my stops with my future sister-in-law as we tried to find her an amazing apt to…read morestudy and party in during her upcoming years at Kellogg. Evanston Place and Park Evanston are both very similar...so much so that I had trouble telling the future sis which one I liked best. This premier apt building has spacious apartments (including spacious studios), newly updated kitchens (granite and cherry wood cabinets...love it!), lots of closet space, a very nice common room equipped with wi-fi, a pool, an adequate gym (although the equipment could use some updating), and laundry machines on every floor! It's very expensive for Evanston- about $1600 for a 1 bedroom. Craziness...my friends pay way less than that for their apartments in downtown Chicago!! The leasing agent, Anna, was very sweet and helpful...and I loved the earrings she was wearing (yep, I'm all about the random facts). If you're looking for a premier apartment in Evanston I suggest checking out both Evanston Place and Park Evanston...if you can shell out the dough either one is a very good choice!

My husband and I have lived in Evanston Place for about 5 months. I am a graduate student at…read moreNorthwestern and he is a working professional. We love the location, I personally like all of the staff. I continually try to give this place the benefit of the doubt, but it always disappoints me. The rent is way too high to justify the issues we've encountered, so if you can afford other options, please reconsider living here. Some highlights: - Our washer/dryer unit was broken for a whole month before it was fixed. Communication from the building and from maintenance was continually poor. The date for when our machine would be fixed kept getting pushed back, and we had to follow up multiple times to check on what was happening. In the meantime, we had to use the communal laundry room in the hall. Thankfully, management reimbursed us for this expense, but it was aggravating nonetheless because in-unit laundry is very important to us. - One of the elevators in our tower (south) has been broken since the beginning of October. First, management said 2-3 weeks to fix. When I hadn't heard back for a month, I sent a note to the building and they said it would actually be 6-8 weeks. Well, it's been about 10 weeks now -- I finally followed up again and now they're saying "it may be early January". The lack of communication and unreliable messaging from management has made me lose complete trust in them. Meanwhile, having only one working elevator is extremely frustrating. A few weeks ago, that elevator was temporarily broken as well, so we had to walk up and down 8 flights of stairs several times to walk our dog. - The walls are incredibly thin. A Northwestern undergrad lives next to our apartment and has frequent gatherings which are incredibly loud even through the wall. A couple months ago she had a birthday party and we could literally make out every word of them screaming "happy birthday" at midnight through the wall in our bedroom...just so you get the idea. - We didn't realize this before moving in, but the heating and cooling system is designed so you *cannot* use A/C during the winter, or heat during the summer. In late September the building switched over to heating only, which was a disaster when we ran into multiple 70+ degree days in October. Even with the heating off and vents closed in our unit, it was still uncomfortably hot inside and we could not turn on A/C. - The adjacent garage isn't enclosed. I didn't *think* this was a huge issue until today, where we (and many others) woke up to a broken car window and belongings that were rummaged through. Luckily we didn't have anything valuable inside, but we still owe $250 on the broken window since it didn't meet our insurance deductible. I realize this isn't the fault of building management but it's yet another data point that makes me disappointed in the living situation here.

I've listed in a Cagan Property in Lakeview for almost four years and it's been great! I know…read morereviews for property management companies are almost always bad but Cagan really deserves five stars. I haven't had any issues with them-- they take payment online, they fix maintenance issues quickly, rent hasn't gone up much, if at all, over the last four years either. The team I work with is great, flexible, and laid back. I also think for the area the rent is a great deal for the amount of space you get, at least in my building. I would continue to live with them if I could! If you're looking for a building in the Lakeview area, I would certainly give them a shot!

The building management person, Ed, is quite a specimen. When i came over to check out the…read moreapartment before renting it, he led me to the wrong apartment and we walked into an apartment where a person was still living inside of it and it seemed like he had 0 days notice to prepare because he was scared and shirtless. The apartment looked absolutely nothing like the listings online but we still signed the lease (dumb move). Ed has a great landlord special where he paints over a leak in the shower ceiling 3 times in a row without fixing the problem, but he made sure to say that we were causing the problem and that our shower curtain was the issue (No it was not). 2 inch German cockroaches live in the laundry room and yes they do get sprayed with Raid but i have seen them for 2 years in the apartment, so im assuming they also pay rent. The rent gets increased every year and you cannot contest it. Sometimes they do turn off all the water in the building for maintenance but they do not give you a heads up until they already turned it off. The shower water is low pressure and will turn off if the person above or below you turns it on, there were lots of days where water was not available for showering. When we moved out, Cagan just said to get someone to take over the lease and that was all- Ed called us to demand 100 dollars for leaving the apartment a mess (the mess was thumbtack and tv mount holes that we were allowed to do and asked for permission to do so when we moved in) and we did not get a message from Cagan to hand over 100 dollars, so im just guessing the money goes straight into his pocket. Our apartment was the cheapest in the complex at 950 in Lakeview East at 541 West Oakdale Avenue, a very desirable location in Chicago near tons of businesses, restaurants, the lake and lots of greenery, so it was a nice deal at first but once the rent creeped up to 1200 we couldn't justify the price anymore. What was nice was that the utilities were included however there was a lot going on internally and it was ultimately not worth it

I agree with Mary. This is my only 1 star review. My only negative review here at all. I hope to…read morehelp others avoid these leasing agents. They took my money and ran. Left me with a roach ridden apartment with no buzzers & little to no parking (neither of which major issue was disclosed by them), repeated criminal activity with arrests that the landlords ignored, poor lighting, smokers, broken plumbing, etc. Eric & Andy at NSA&C are not kind, nor honest. Worst rental experience of my life, and NS is aware of major issues with a large landlord they lease for, and could not seem to care less. I told them all about the issues for 2 years, and sent them proof of others complaining, yet they still lease out units in that building willy nilly. Then Andy told me to use his name as a reference since I told him the landlords bullied me, harassed me, and did not fix major repairs and he badmouthed me to my new landlord. So throw in jeopardizing my rental security after being traumatized for 2 years by bully slumlords. Nice guy.

Lived in one of their t properties for a few years. Horrible experience, abusive property…read moremanagement. I got bedbugs, they did nothing about it. The management company was abusive and rude.

After owning a house in Wilmette for many years I was ready for a change to more carefree living. I…read morewanted to stay in the community so The Residences of Wilmette provided the right combination of new construction, nice amenities and walkable down town location. The apartment is sunny, quiet and offers a nice view of the large sun deck area. The management office staff has been great. They are very personable and have been very responsive to any requests. Mike H

The Residences of Wilmette is by far the nicest apartment complex in the northern Chicagoland area…read more It's conveniently located directly across the street from the Wilmette Metra station and there's a Starbucks, Walgreens and Jewel Osco all within 5 minutes walking distance. The staff is extremely friendly. I knew I wanted to live here the second I started my tour!

Lovely apartment. Jeff does a great job making sure the building is well maintained. Very responsiveread more

My daughter and I recently had the pleasure of renting one of Jeff Stringer's properties in…read moreEvanston and could not have been more pleased with the entire process. We did a big move across the country and Jeff made it as seamless as possible making note of every detail to make sure everything would be move-in ready at our arrival. Refinishing the floors, adding new paint, new light fixtures and lighting, and a beautiful new tub! He was very accommodating with our move date as well. He takes pride in all his properties and goes the extra mile to make sure you are comfortable in your new home. He also makes himself readily available if any questions or concerns. We sure appreciate all Jeff's time and efforts he put forth in making our move into his rental unit perfect and worry-free. He put our minds at ease and the place was super! The unit was very clean and is located downtown Evanston close to STARBUCKS :), stores, shopping and the beach! Neighbors are so nice and friendly too! Thank you for a wonderful experience Jeff!! :)

I have lived in this place for three years and loved it. Roosevelt, Kris, Sasha (concierges),…read moreYevgeny, Mackenzie (leasing office) have always gone above and beyond to be welcoming and accommodating of me as a resident. Thanks to all of the above for making this building such a special place to live.

You may be locked out of your unit at anytime, as the management seems to have trouble tracking…read morewhat keys to turn on or off when folks are moving in or out, which by the way IS ALL THE TIME. Same with cable/internet service. If you are locked out, good luck finding someone to let you in as with near-constant moving, it takes an extra 10 minutes to go up or down the elevator. Plenty of rules cover grilling, the gym, and the pool area (the elevator too but those are not enforced). More than one occasion they have staff waiting to make sure any pool users are 'on a lease'. I assume similar rules govern the hot tub, but it hasn't been open in more than year. The maintenance staff seems incredibly over-worked and under-appreciated. That's probably not all on management (I'd bet most is), but funny enough they have resources to harass people using the pool over the weekend, but not enough resources to get you in a unit you were wrongly locked out of in less than 20 minutes. If you live here long enough, a taco truck may provide you a couple of free tacos for your troubles, but if you're locked out during the time it arrives - NO TACOS FOR YOU!