This place is nice-looking from the street and the upgrades do have esthetic appeal. The maintenance crew tend to be helpful, but what you get out them is related to the type of relationship you develop. We have always treated them right and with respect. If you focus on the color of their skin and limited English and treat them rudely, anyone will be reluctant to give you good service.
We have found three major areas of concern:
1) You can hear just about everything through the walls and ceiling. My wife knows our outside neighbors' schedule down cold - down to when the husband gets up at night to pee. If we spoke their language, we'd know a lot more about their personal lives than they'd like.
2) Parking is a disaster. The leases clearly state which areas are for tenants only. Many residents (and their guests/visitors) disregard this. Despite repeated requests, management fails to enforce this. For $2000/month, I'd like to park close to my apt. when I come home late at night. If they can afford to put up signs about recycling bins and install lights over the trash areas, they can put up signage in resident parking. Many residents use their garages as storage or work areas. Some residents have more than two cars and that impinges on others' ability to find parking. This seems to be an endemic problem at other Irvine Co apartment complexes - gated or not.
3) Management is not responsive to reasonable requests and complaints. They either are not concerned about the inconveniences faced by the tenants or their hands are tied and they can do nothing to resolve the issues. There seems to be a high rate of turnover in the leasing office and the current cadre is a group of haughty, condescending women. It is not clear if this is the corporate culture of Irvine Co or within the staff of our leasing office. They are not isolated and do meet periodically as a larger group for business purposes. It may be symptomatic of a company culture or broader dysfunction.
Management is inflexible and not interested in working with the people whose rent checks pay their salaries. This is particularly an issue when third party contractors - such as pest control - are involved.

The bottom line here is that living in this (or other Irvine Co communities) represents a compromise - you will pay a lot of money (although, in the grand scheme of things the rent is not that terribly high when you shop around) and you will have to decide if the other benefits of Irvine (school district, climate, clean streets, low crime rate and proximity to ocean) are sufficient enough to offset the parking issues, noise from neighbors and leasing office staff who will likely not be able to help you with your problems after you sign a lease.
The issue of disruptive neighbors seems to vary from building to building rather than being complex-wide, but then you are always gambling when entering such a large complex and not knowing your neighbors - present or future.
There are adjacent areas of Costa Mesa and Tustin nearby which offer a similar standard of living at a somewhat lower price.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 08/18/2008
well said. we live here, and we concur.
From: feelingjipped	Date: 09/10/2008
We just moved out and are going through a bit of a hassle. They seem to be bent on getting as much of your security deposit. We have serisou concerns about this process and their communication and accounting. They originally overstated the amount they planned to deduct from our security deposit. On the issue of staff: Allison - who may be the community's asst. manager has some attitude issues. My wife has described her as "bitchy". On one occasion, she said to me that "we just come in to work here" - as if to say they are unable to work with tennants. This government job - like approach speaks volumes about the management's goals and values in dealing with tenants.

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