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Pretty Good Overall
From:
-Anonymous-
Date posted:
9/7/2007
Years at this apartment:
2006
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2007
I've been at stonybrook for about a year and a half. The quick summary is that the staff are all nice and professional and actually seem to care - which from my experience historically is sometimes rare... The maintenance people all are pretty good... I've had a heater break and a couple other minor things but they've always gotten there fast and fixed it right away. The grounds are pretty well maintained... There are a few annoyances... I'll put the details below.
Social Structure:
This was a big deal for me... some apartment places have a lot of families while others have a bunch of college students. Stonybrook is (by a very rough guess) probably about 70% families and retirees. This makes the place have a nice feel to it and helps it seem pretty safe overall. There are a number of young couples and college students that are around, but generally speaking not in a really disruptive way. With that said, the areas around each of the pools gets a little louder than many would like - particularly late at night, because people routinely have parties and things out there... even just 3 or 4 college students swimming can make a lot of noise. If that kind of thing will bother you, just avoid the pool areas and you'll probably be fine. Occasionally you do get some noise from the parking lot - particularly if you're near the entrance area - but this is to be expected and is a reality of any apartment.
Staff:
The staff, at least from my experience, have all been really good and professional. The manager actually (again, just from what I understand) fought her boss to keep them from raising the rates by too much this year. In other words, they actually seem to care about the residents. The maintenance people have always quickly fixed any issues I've had and that's never been a problem. The only issue here, and this might just be a pet peeve of mine, but they have outside grounds crews that do things like mow the lawn and keep the grounds nice. The problem is they bring these guys in at 7am... so if you are planning on sleeping, it's pretty easy to be woken up by the sound of gas powered blowers. I actually don't know why they haven't moved them back to 9 or 10...
Buildings:
The buildings are, honestly, what you'd probably expect from a cheap to mid-priced apartment place in tucson. If that doesn't mean much to you... I'll try to help here... everything works well enough, there's air conditioning, a nice balcony (on most units), but inside you shouldn't expect things to be all that nice. The carpet is really thing, the counters are cheap and old laminate, the cabinets are basically simply plywood/particle board with a laminate coating on the outside (not on the insides... which are usually pretty beat up... With that said, for the price, I think they are normal, or even decent for tucson generally. Also, I think they might be redoing some of the carpet and stuff in the units, but they do it when people move out, so I haven't gotten it.
Surrounding Area:
Tucson is a strange town (if you're not from here)... basically the whole thing is one big valley in the middle of these desert mountains. The town has spread to basically fill the valley. The reason this is relevant is that since land was cheap, the town went outward rather than upward. When you combine this with grossly poor traffic lights timings and a bad road layout, the town can get enormously frustrating to drive across. Also - there are no highways or boulevards worth their name to help. In other words, don't assume that because you're 3 miles from work that your commute will be quick. You really just have to drive it and find out. Tucson also has a lot of problems with crime - I'm assuming that if you're looking at apartments here, you are probably coming either way - so just take this as a reality. The question then becomes where to go to minimize the crime... the Tucson police have maps of criminal activity on their website - so you might want to check those out. I will say this though... you can't fully trust those... Stonybrook is actually a good example of why. Technically, stonybrook is in a relatively high-crime area. But the reality is, I've been here for a year and a half and never seen or heard of anything. I don't think this is because stonybrook is particularly secure - it isn't (and don't let the gate fool you - it doesn't work in practice because it stays open as long as people are going through and so cars just wait for other cars)... no, I think it's because the criminal activity in the area is not grounded here... I won't get into exactly what that means, but it's basically that in terms of a community, the area is fine... but the same region contains things like the tucson mall and some other major shopping areas that likely experience a great deal of crime. In other words, criminals probably go there, but they don't impact the residential areas much.
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