Do you enjoy sharing your apartment with roaches, ants, and lizards? How about sewers backing up into your toilets and spilling over onto your floors, not to mention leaving your lawn covered in used toilet paper? Do you want to come home on rainy days and wade through rushing water above your ankles just to get into your apartment? How appealing is showering in a slippery, peeling, painted over tub kit that requires a squeegee to get the water to go down the drain? Are you comfortable knowing that another apartment in your building is plagued with mold? Or hearing every step your upstairs neighbors take on creaky old floors? Do you have money to replace your tires when you drive over screws that are carelessly sprinkled in the parking lot by construction crews? How do you like constant construction noise and frequent water shutoffs? Or living with the smell of garbage (not in cans of course), put out by inconsiderate neighbors, days before scheduled pickup? Dodging piles of dog waste on lawns and sidewalks? Do you feel safe when bicycles are parked blocking access to the fire extinguisher for your building? Or when undesirable people who are not on their lease move in with your neighbors? If any of this appeals to you, and you want to pay $1400 per month or more to live in such luxury, then Contempo Lane is the place for you!
Pest control is substandard. There are ants all over the property and you get them inside your door tracks and apartment. You get a quarterly visit from an exterminator who puts a dab of roach killer on your cabinet hinges. He told me I needed new door gaskets to keep the pests out. Contempo Lane maintenance told me they were unavailable and stuck some cheap foam around my door. Even small geckos got inside my apartment--not to mention roaches the size of my palm. Contempo Lane will send the exterminator out as many times as you ask, but if they don't seal off the entry points, what good is it?
The sewers in Building M backed up three times in less than a year. Toilets overflowed. There was toilet paper and who knows what else all over the lawn. The residents had to clean the resulting filthy messes themselves. Every time it rains a stream of water rushes down the walkway between Buildings M and N. Residents refer to this as "the river" or "the waterfront view". Not only was this dangerous to walk through, but it soaked and ruined your shoes. We complained repeatedly and management promised to fix it. They told us they were going to build a wall, install special drains--I heard twice that work was going to start on Tuesday--but those Tuesdays came and went with no action.
Showers and tubs get painted over instead of replaced. The painting is sloppy--they even paint over hair--and it peels. Shower floors are uneven, so water, soap, shampoo, and hair conditioner pool up in the sides and you must push them down the drain. Painting in general is unprofessional. When tenants move out, they just slap a coat of paint on the walls and before long old stains start bleeding through. If I set anything plastic down on my carpet, it got wet underneath. I quickly learned not to do this. I ran two dehumidifiers 24/7 and had to empty them at least weekly. I avoided mold, but others were not so fortunate.
They're in the process of insulating the upstairs floors as tenants move out, but if you're unfortunate enough to have an apartment under tenants who have lived there for a few years, you're going to hear them walking around no matter how much they try to keep quiet. If your neighbors work second shift, I promise you that your sleep is going to be interrupted when they get home from work.
Contempo Lane installed new windows last fall. The parking lot was a minefield of screws. One punctured the sidewall of my tire. I used to pick up screws when I walked to the mailbox and take them to the management office, so they were aware. We had to live with trucks and constant pounding and drilling while this project went on for months. Some of the recurring plumbing problems required jackhammering and shutting off the water for hours.
There were all kinds of rules in the lease about trash, pets, keeping entranceways clear, what can go on patios, and how long guests can stay. Unfortunately, these rules were not enforced very well. Complaining was a waste of time. The managers on site don't appear to have any real power, and the staff changed frequently so you had to start your complaints all over again. I lived there 18 months and there were 3 different property managers, 3 different maintenance supervisors, and 4 different leasing coordinators during that time span.
The location is great, but you can do a whole lot better for the money. Don't let the pretty model unit, the landscaping around the office, or the misspelled words painted on the gym walls fool you. It's all nothing but lipstick on an old pig. read more