My roommate and I have been living here for about 5 months now. We moved up here from down south and have never experienced snow or a real winter. One of our concerns when we were apartment shopping was regarding parking garages. Unfortunately, Gateway Lofts Lansing did not have a parking garage but they did have free open parking. My roommate and I both have cars and had past experiences with previous apartments being money vultures and charging outrageous prices for parking on top of what we'd already been paying for rent. So it was almost refreshing to be able to park my car where I am already paying to stay without having to pay additional. However, that has all now changed, parking is now an additional cost and you are only allowed ONE parking spot per apartment. This is a ridiculous rule, I live in and pay for a two bedroom, I should have the access to at least 2 parking spaces. Then many of the premium parking spaces in the lot are allotted to the other businesses despite the readily available street parking and the back lot the businesses could use. Instead the apartment complex continuously convinces us, that we as residents, should go park in the back lot. On top of this, the elevator is always broken, it was down for over a month, then it worked for 48 hours, and now it's broken AGAIN.
In addition to these issues, the trash collectors are very "particular" about when they want to collect trash. After repeated issues of the trash collectors not pulling our trash bag, which was tied and set outside our door in the bin, we went to the office and were informed that there was a weight limit on trash collection. This further came as a surprise because we only fill our trashcan to the top, NEVER overflowing. And unless they were putting our trash on a scale there was no way of us knowing the exact weight of our trash. However, when we picked it up we had no problems with the weight of it. So it seemed that whoever was collecting the trash on one day, wouldn't collect it, but if we left it out for another day the other person would. Which gave us the impression that the issue isn't the weight of our trash but what whoever was collecting on that particular off day not wanting to do their job. Also, the trash shoot on our floor is never unlocked, so the only other option is to carry the trash outside ourselves, despite the $25 that is included in our monthly rent for trash services.
These issues have really created such a bad rep for the apartment (Gateway Lofts Lansing), it does not have the same luster and hospitable energy it had when we first moved in and it is highly disappointing. The parking changes are very tacky to say the least, the trash services are inconsistent and the elevator is unreliable. The only upside has been the lady working in the front office, there has been a lack of management and a lot of the responsibility falls on Ms. Meg and she has been wonderful with communicating and hearing our concerns as best she can. read more