My boyfriend and I lived at MetroMark between May of 2017 and May of 2018 and have recently moved out to a different neighborhood.
Pros:
- The front desk staff were usually pretty nice! Some crabby encounters every once in a while, but overall, they were pretty helpful. Sean is especially great. He helped us find our apartment and sign the lease and was able to answer any questions we had along the way.
- The building is brand new and the units are modern. We loved our actual unit and were sad to move out of it. My only gripe with the apartment was the paneled doors. Everything else was so modern! They seemed a little out of place.
- The facilities are pretty great. We didn't use the grills or common deck space all that much, but it was nice to know they were there. There's also a gym (which I'll mention further down) and a communal kitchen area.
- Signing for the apartment was really easy. The only payment they required was a $500 security deposit, which we got back in its entirety.
Cons:
- The location isn't ideal. I know that this isn't really MetroMark's fault, as we were the ones that decided to move in knowing where it was, but I think we convinced ourselves we could deal with the location, and then ultimately couldn't. It's very close to Forest Hills station, which is definitely handy for subway, commuter rail, and bus service, but other than that, there isn't too much of a neighborhood. If you walk a little further down Washington, there are a few places in either direction, but to get to downtown JP is about a 15 minute walk. It's also directly across the street from an MBTA bus depot, which didn't really bother us, it just wasn't great to look at. We really enjoyed being right next to the wooded path that leads straight to Back Bay if you walk it long enough! But ultimately, the location was one of our driving factors for moving, as it was really important to us to be able to step out of our apartment and feel that we were in a neighborhood. This place just doesn't really have that feel.
- It's not close to any grocery stores! Kind of goes with the location point, I guess, but this one is really important to me, so I wanted to separate it. There is a Harvest Co-op about a five minute walk from the building, but the prices there are crazy, and they don't have everything you'd need. The only other grocery stores in the area are Stop & Shop (3 T stops away) and Whole Foods (which really isn't super accessible except by bus, and it's still not right on the route). We found it pretty frustrating to grocery shop on a whim in this building.
- The gym was a nice thing to have, but quickly became very crowded. One of the reasons I told myself I could afford this place was that I would no longer have to pay for a gym membership. It does have a decent amount of equipment, but as soon as more people moved into the building, it was often too crowded to have an enjoyable workout. For a building with so many units (there has to be at least 250), the gym is really quite small. There's also very limited space for floor work or general weight lifting. There's a small yoga room off to the side which I sometimes used if the other part of the gym was too crowded, but they quickly put a sign up that said you couldn't use weights in that room. Ultimately, I ended up getting a gym membership anyway.
- One of my very least favorite things about this building was the number of elevators. In the larger building, there is only 1 per tower. There were at least 100 units in our tower, with multiple people living in each, and there was one elevator. I often got very frustrated, waiting for the elevator to take several trips before coming down to pick me up. Even worse in the summer or winter, because to keep its status as a green building, there is very little heating and cooling in the vestibule that you have to wait in. It seems a little silly that this wasn't thought of during construction. There were also a couple of times that this 1 elevator that serviced our tower wasn't working - 2 of these times, we had a 50-pound cart of groceries that then had to be lugged up several sets of stairs by hand.
- Finally, the price. I know that luxury apartments aren't inexpensive. I feel that. And it does seem to be cheaper than a lot of luxury apartments closer in to downtown. But it's important to keep in mind that you're really just paying for the actual design of the apartment here. The units aren't huge, the location isn't great, and there's not amazing amenities (though they are nice). It eventually didn't seem worth it to us, so we didn't continue our stay there.
I didn't mean for the cons section to overpower the pros section in the way that it has - I didn't dislike it that much. I really didn't dislike it at all. Basically, the high price was not worth it to us, a couple who wanted to be in a neighborhood.
If you are okay with feeling a bit isolated for a very nice unit in a building with good amenities, it's great! read more