First the good news, worthy of kudos: Roger, the head of the maintenance team/ effort during much…read moreof the two year span we lived at Vita, is by far the best staff member there. Always responsive, efficient, and naturally engaging. His predecessor always had a half-hearted excuse for not fixing obvious trim and finish problems.
The rest of the Vita 'experience' is best summarized by types of problems encountered, many if not all of them left unresolved. To be honest, Vita and Zocalo Corp cannot now address the biggest problem of all, location. With Littleton suffering from various types of poor governance in its quest to become a small Boulder, there's not much one can do about the transients/ crazed souls who often enough disturb and walk through the area and property, the miserable local and pass-through traffic patterns, or the de-nuding and over-development of the LiDo downtown neighborhood. Keep the Littleton PD and City Managers numbers on speed dial, if you're inclined to report things.
A couple of decisions Zocalo should have thought through, however, are the flow of public and resident parking into the parking structure. There's only one driveway and one entrance exit, and there's plenty of traffic (and delays) on weekends and holidays from the patrons of the restaurant and golf range/ bar which share the property. One entrance/ exit might not be a big problem, except when the access/ system frequently breaks down, and disallows entry even when its ticket printer runs out of paper! Bizarre.
Other basic areas which troubled us continually:
Parking assignments. Our open space assignment was never resolved to provide a covered space, even though 3 employees promised that an audit and resolution was on its way.
Parking security/ signage: No signs to help patrons and visitors avoid a secured residents-only elevator in order to access the retail shops on-property. Sounds simple, yet Zocalo - and its staff apologists - comes off as too cheap to put up a $5 sign to promote good will.
(We were always politely re-directing visitors to the ground floor sidewalks.)
With power failures, the parking structure becomes a pitch dark space - with few emergency lights. Does that make sense for a complex with many residents in the 70-90 year old age range?
Car break-ins and loitering were not epidemic, but when they happened, management never acknowledged any security aspect of this problem. A break-in involving the cutting of the chain-link fencing separating public and private parking was NOT resolved by putting up a tighter high security mesh fence, but with Zocalo instead hiring two workmen to stitch together existing and replacement fencing, yielding a patchwork stretch that looks to be easily breached again.
Suggestions made directly to staff about this and similar problems are met with head-nodding, wide-eyed acknowledgment and sympathy, but...no action. Is the Vita staff only expecting elderly or senior tenants to be so happy with the diversions and entertainment provided each week/ month, that serious and obvious vulnerabilities don't matter? Hard to argue otherwise.
Management also seems to not bother explaining contradictions or vagueness re: certain rules or practices. As an example, while we were moving out, a neighbor was surprised and troubled to hear of how we needed to use a deep-cleaning checklist in order to avoid move-out charges to our deposit - including high dollar charges for re-painting any interior walls. Naturally, she and her husband had gone ahead and done their own re-painting with more than a couple of walls in their apartment, after being told it was fine/ expected/ no problem.
I guess that if you or an elderly parent don't mind having group or collective activities changed, removed, canceled, or modified, and also having some of these actions simply brushed off, then putting up $3000 + collective utilities each month is no big deal. For us, a move back to the openness and quieter suburbs was a relief.
