I recently moved from these apartments, and I'm sad that I had to go. I would have totally given…read morethese apartments 5 stars except that there were some minor quirks about the building that some people will hate and not be able to live with.
So lets start with Pros:
1) Beautiful, vintage, hardwood floors, tons of storage, lots of windows! (enough adjectives?) When you walk in, you get this feeling of spaciousness. The windows are large and let in tons of light (my apt before this one, did not, so I super appreciated it), the hardwood floors are beautiful (though a bit well used).
2) Beautiful courtyard and maintained landscaping. You feel like you are in a garden.
3) Quite neighborhood. Mostly young professionals, I lived there for 5 years and I don't think I once saw a kid (nothing against kids, but it did make the courtyard nice and quite). And the building that I was in, was super friendly. I knew my neighbors, they knew me, and quite often we did a "food exchange" where we would leave pastries, etc at each other's doors.
4) The management is great. When I first moved in, Luna worked there and she was so friendly and always there to help. Then when she moved on, Paul took over (I think he's still there) and he was nice too. The maintenance is great. They show up within a day or two of sending in a request. (in fact, I once flooded the kitchen from a broken pipe on Thanksgiving, and they showed up and weren't bitchy about it at all. Felt bad, but they were sweet about it)
5) I swear you will never run out of hot water...I take like 30 minute boiling hot showers...never ran out of hot water once. Booyah!
6) Also, for the most part, soundproofing is pretty good. That's not to say that if your neighbor has a party with loud music you won't hear it, but for everyday life, it's pretty quite.
7) Secured entryway which was nice.
The Cons:
1) The heating is steam heat from radiators. So when they turn on, you will hears some loud ass clanging. My mum was staying over once and she thought someone was trying to break in. So be prepared to be hear some clanging at like 5 in the morning (no joke). Also with the heat it's controlled by one (that's right, just one) thermometer for the entire complex. So at times your heat wouldn't turn on because that building hadn't been chilled enough, but yours had (le sigh). And finally about the radiator heat, and then I'll be done (hopefully), when I first moved in, the radiator in the living room & dining room didn't work, but the ones in the rooms did. So the rooms would be saunas and the rest of the house was freezing. Then we finally got smart and requested the radiators be fixed. Which was great because now our entire house had heat, but also radiators don't really have a dial, they are kind of either on or off. So we had the choice of having a sauna-like apartment or a freezing apartment. So we chose the latter and just opened all the windows in our house (in the middle of winter), so that it wouldn't get too warm. So be prepared.
2) Pipes are old in this building, so if you have long hair, be prepared to call maintenance every few months to help you with that issue. But it's not just long hair, you don't have a garbage disposal in the kitchen, so make sure to have a catchall for when you're washing dishes, or else you'll be in trouble (hence the flooding of the kitchen on Thanksgiving, you can't use drain-o on old pipes). And this only happened a few times and I think they fixed it, but on occasion the pipes break and then you'll have muddy water. As I said, only happened a few times in the 5 years I lived there, so I don't think it's a consistent problem, but ye be warned.
3)This might not be an issue for every unit, but our oven would not keep temperature, and as an avid baker, it drove me insane. The neighbors below us said that they did not have that problem.
4)If your apartment is on 18th, parking will not be an issue, at all...ever. There is a parking lot across the way that has a sign saying "don't park here" but don't worry, they have never towed. That being said, if you live on 18th, there is a motorcycle shop that shares that parking lot and they like to do donuts and ride really loudly starting at like 10pm to like 2pm. I was raised around motorcycles, so I found it rather soothing, my roommate however did not. As for parking for the rest of the complex...I'm unsure, but it looked like a total bitch. So something to think about.
Okay I think that's all the cons, so as you can see the pros out weigh the cons. I've noticed that a lot of property management companies have horrible reviews, so I wanted to say that this place was great. I would have lived there for years to come if rent hadn't gotten too high for me and my roommate hadn't moved to Costa Rica. Hope this helps!
