STAFF
The office and maintenance staff are, in general, very helpful and friendly. They usually greet you by name and are very conversational. My children and I have enjoyed going down to the office and making chit-chat when we pick up our packages or need assistance. On the other side, when there are issues (which inevitably arise with any rental property), some can be extremely defensive. A couple individuals I have known in the complex have actually had shouting arguments with members of the staff which I find incredibly unprofessional.
SAFETY
On the outside of these apartments, it is VERY safe. We're talking key fobs to get in at every entrance - the outside gates and then the outside doors and then sometimes inside doors and then your own door has two locks inside! It's a vault. Safety from within, however, is another story which leads me to my next topic.
CONSTRUCTION
Though the high ceilings and very large rooms are a wonderful perk to this place, we learned right from the start that everything is made with very poor quality and lack of attention to detail. The day we moved in, our toilet paper dispenser fell off the wall and behind it, we could see that there were many holes from where someone tried to install it. That was our first clue about the sheetrock here. It will NOT hold things. Unless something is screwed straight into the stud, it will fall down. This was the only way we could keep our curtain rods up! Everything else we have hung on the walls has fallen down at some point in our stay.
Then, about a month ago, I opened one of my cabinet doors and the entire cabinet came out of the wall! Fortunately, there were only paper plates and cups inside. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have caught it in time and whatever was inside would have fallen in my face. I shudder to think if one of my children had opened the cabinet instead of me. Once the cabinet came out, I looked at the place it was held in. No anchors! A 30 lb. cabinet designed to hold even heavier things was being held up by two small screws that were not in a stud or anything. The maintenance crew fixed it quickly and well, but it is pretty alarming that it happened in the first place.
QUALITY
This is where all my low ratings come from. That poor maintenance guy is all over the place fixing things night and day because this brand new place is falling apart! As stated above, the sheetrock is junk, but in just a few short months stay, we have also had issues with our plumbing, the carpet, (Apparently it was too much hassle for the builders to pick up loose nails and things before laying in the flooring? We can feel all kinds of weird things under the carpet), the door panels (One wide swing of the door from my three-year-old son and the door stopper went straight through it), and the other hardware is just low quality. Be careful with the walls too! They're all painted in a flat light tone so EVERYTHING scratches and scuffs it. Just moving your stuff into the apartment will leave them looking icky.
LOCATION
Great and annoying at the same time. It is located on the 1 and you can get to food, shopping, entertainment, you name it within a 5-10 minute car drive. There is not, however, anything within walking distance except a Mom's Market and the Goodwill and it's kitty-corner on a very busy and poorly designed street. We basically had to run across when there was a break in traffic!
The complex is also across from a police and fire station. Great for rental insurance, terrible for sound! I can't count the number of times my kids have been woken up from naps because of sirens and just general car and motorcycle traffic. One long side of the complex also faces the east, so if you are on that side, either get a good thick set of curtains or be prepared to have a nice sunny awakening every day by 6 am. It makes those rooms pretty warm in the summer as well.
ENERGY-EFFICIENCY
We haven't lived in the northeast before so we have no experience with what energy costs are usually like, but our bill has been no lower than anywhere else we've lived. We have paid around twice what we usually have in other any other place. I can't imagine what the bill would be if this place didn't run energy efficient.
AMENITIES
The pool is great. It's tiny and nobody ever uses it so we basically get free reign. The only bugger is that it doesn't open until noon and by then you only have a few hours before that whole area is covered in shadow from the surrounding buildings. Still, it's decently kept up and the lifeguards are usually friendly and even helpful, playing with the kids on top of doing their regular duties.
The gym is excellent. Lots of new machines - bikes, ellipticals, treadmills - with tvs attached to all of them. Again, barely anyone seems to use it so I usually have fr read more