Let me preface this by saying I've lived here for 10.5 months now.
During that time, I had to live through MAJOR renovations at this building. In the end, the lobby looked great, but the carpet in the hallways were too funky a design for me (it's one of those designs where it's so busy-looking, you wouldn't be able to tell if it's dirty). I'll just list the pros and cons of this place:
Pros:
- location, location, location. The Foggy Bottom metro stop is literally a 1.5 minute walk away. If you're a GW student, the campus is right there. There's a 7-11 next door (granted, it closes at 11 p.m....yes, believe it or not, it's not 24 hours).
- building is located right between a Trader Joe's to the north and a Safeway to the south.
- no mice/bug problems, as far as I know. One day I saw dead roaches near the laundry room on the ground floor, but they were gone when I went back down there a few days later. Don't really know what that was all about.
- yay for receptionists/doormen who hold your packages.
- overall a safe neighborhood, and Georgetown is in your backyard.
- a lot of students live in this building, I believe more graduate than undergraduate. But out of the time I've lived here, I think I've only heard really loud parties twice in my hallway, which is good. I'm assuming prospective tenants don't want to feel like they're living in a dorm.
Cons:
- super thin walls. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep, I hear my neighbor make some really freaky Tasmanian Devil-type noise. No joke. And when all that renovation went on months ago, it was just plain miserable. I sleep like a deaf bear - I don't wake up even if someone elbows me in the face (true story), but all the construction at 7 a.m. was unfortunately able to wake me up.
- I live in a unit that faces the GW hospital across the street, so of course, that equals a LOT of sirens. Try to get a unit that faces the back.
- too many college students in the area. I'm sorry, I've only been out of college several years, but I just find college students to be annoying, especially the ones who flaunt their parents' wealth. You know who you are.
- I have AT&T, and my cell phone reception SUCKS. I don't know if it's my phone or plain old reception issues, but either way, I get at least 4 dropped calls a day. Super irritating.
- I don't find the area to be that entertaining, and the majority of the restaurants in Foggy Bottom are just average.
- for some reason, our water gets shut off often. I never had this problem in any apartments I lived in in other cities...maybe it's a DC thing? I don't know, but it's not cool to go to work wearing a baseball cap b/c you couldn't shower that morning due to no hot water. read more