A mess when I lived there, but what could I expect at $285/month'
From:
Doglass
Date posted:
8/7/2006
Years at this apartment:
2005
-
2006
I had an assigned parking space, and to my surprise it was always available for me whenever I wanted to park.
My friend had an unassigned space and said to me early in the school year that on nights Thursday-Saturday that he had a difficult time finding a parking spot.
The noise level was often quiet, but on the weekends often painfully loud. It sounded like the residents above us were jumping up and down on their floor all the time. Sometimes they would jump so hard that it would shake our ceiling fan.
I could hear my next door neighbors talk on their phones and also hear their phones ringing. I could also make out a conversation fairly well in the middle of the night when the people in the room above mine decided to talk. Oddly enough, I never heard them engage in intercourse.
My neighbors would often throw beer bottles from their second story porch into the expanse of rocks and sidewalk that landscaped the uncomfortable common area. The beer bottles would spray glass onto the sidewalk and rocks, making it dangerous to go outside if you weren't in shoes or sandals. There was no grass, so the rocks and gravel radiated heat, making this place seem very hot in the summer. The common area also had four light poles, all made out of plastic, all worn out from the elements. The lenses on the lights were all cracked or broken, giving this place a very cheap feeling.
The outdoor lighting is sparse. There are only a few dimly lit orange colored lights out in the parking lot. There are no lights underneath the carports, which is unusual.
In the beginning of the school year, a vehicle in the parking lot exploded, charring one of the carports very badly. You would think that the carport would be repaired or replaced, but no way jose.
Trash was all over the parking lots, despite the management's best efforts to clean up in the morning. The groundskeeping unit seemed very understaffed for such a large complex.
From the time we moved in, our apartment faintly smelled something like either mold or a wet dog. We cleaned often but it didn't seem ever to alleviate the problem.
Fixtures throughout the apartment seemed cheap. The chairs were especially unyeilding, and the carpet was quite disgusting even upon move-in. The model had wood floors, where the hell were they in this apartment' The linoleum quite frankly sucked. It always looked dirty, even though we tried to keep it sparkling. There were bugs too. I've never dealt with cockroaches before, but I saw a couple here. This problem probably had more to do with us than it had to do with the quality of the apartment. One particularly interesting evening, a scorpion scurried around the carpet, practically under all types of camoflouge that the brown fabric provided. I, barefoot, found the nearest text to drive him into the synthetic fibers, rendering the bug more useless than he already was. From that moment on I swore off my once storied love of carpet.
We had no problems with breakins or security, but the complex admits that it does have problems and that cars get broken into at a high rate. Police cars are en masse in the complex on the weekends, however the officers seem to be there for mostly symbolic reasons, as I never see them actually get out of their car and patrol.
I went to the pool area a few times. Once, I noticed a Hispanic family, looking very out of place, using the facilities. This would be OK except for the fact I asked them if they were residents of the complex and if I could see their keys. They couldn't speak English, so I asked them in Spanish and they said no to both questions.
I didn't bother asking them to leave as I decided it would be a cruel waste of my own time.
I declined to live at that apartment during the Summer although I was still paying another two months rent.
When I came back at the end of July, 2006 to collect the rest of my items and move out, I found that someone had been staying in my room, using my television, my cables, my power strip, and my alarm clock. What was really interesting though, is that it was the apartment complex that had authorized him to stay in this room! I was lucky nothing was stolen from me!
After explaining our situation to the management, they assured me that I would not be responsible for any cleaning charges nor would I be responsible for those last two months of rent and that I would be getting a refund.
They resolved the situation quite nicely, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Overall, management seems loose. They're obviously not in control and they obviously cannot handle this many residents with such a skeleton staff. If I were managing this complex I would raise my rents to improve security and maintenance.
In the meantime, be prepared to get what you pay for. It's a far cry from the "resort-style" living that is advertised. Last time I was at a resort, the countertops were granite, the rooms had hard tile in the bathroom and kitchen, and the carpets were finely woven and clean. Just because there's a pool, a couple of tanning beds, and a vending machine doesn't make it a resort.
UA residents would be better off living at least somewhere closer to campus, or better yet, one of the new dorms.
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