Built around 1974, Rivergate was purchased in November 2004 by a Hamden, CT developer who owns other apartment complexes in Enfield (Woodgate) and Manchester (The Oaks). Upon taking ownership of Rivergate, the new owner renamed it "River Hollow Apartments". Major exterior renovations were planned, including new siding, pitched roofs, and new wooden boardwalks, which are the only way to access the apartments on the river side. A clubhouse and gym were also planned. According to an area newspaper article reporting on the change of ownership, the developer was seeking to bring River Hollow from its current "Class D" status to "Class A".
With the planned improvements came major rental rate increases. Under the previous owners, the new rent at renewal time would increase by $15 a month at most. Under the new ownership, the rent was raised by $50 a month in 2005. In 2006, the rent increased another $60 a month to bring the total for a one bedroom apartment on the river bank to $840 a month, heat and hot water included.
The apartments on the Connecticut River bank cost more to rent than the ones on the other side of South Water Street, which are also part of the River Hollow complex. The big plus to the riverside units is the view from the living and dining rooms, which gives a feeling of privacy and spaciousness. The new developer/property manager hopes to capitalize on the river view as he attempts to market River Hollow to a more upscale demographic than has resided here. The river, however, gives off a nauseating odor. Some tenants also use the river bank as their personal landfill, tossing trash, bottles, and dead Christmas trees from their balconies down onto the banks. (So you in effect pay an extra charge to look out at this view of decomposing litter.)
There are three levels of apartments on the river banks; if you live in a middle unit you will have tenants both above and below you. This brings the major drawback of this apartment complex into play: NOISE. None of the planned exterior improvements to the units addresses the lack of insulation or sound-deadening material between the floors/ceilings. As a result, your quality of life while residing here may be significantly impacted.
The new company that owns the complex has a mission statement: "to provide a clean, comfortable, and pleasant place to live." They failed to deliver on this promise. Unemployed tenants lived in the apartment above me. They would stomp from room to room non-stop every night between midnight and 4AM. The entire floor and floor joists would buckle and creak from their every footstep, which sounded like a sledgehammer being pounded against the floor. These tenants would have cell phone conversations out on their balcony every morning around 2AM, and would switch on the speakerphone feature which resulted in the conversation being broadcast to neighboring apartment renters who were trying to sleep.
I brought this nightly noise problem to the attention of the complex's rental manager. She responded with the manner of an exasperated nine-year-old girl. In a tone of absolute contempt for me, she said that the other tenant was just on "another schedule" than me, and that, if I don't like the noise then I should move. So much for the corporate mission statement (and a professional phone manner). I would lose $1,500.00 in penalties for breaking the lease, even if I were to give thirty days' notice.
Poor maintenance in the past caused water damage to the "popcorn"-style ceiling in my unit. I had a virtual waterfall on the inside of my sliding glass door in the living room during heavy rains because the rainwater would overflow the track of the sliding glass door in the unit above me, seep through the ceiling, and leave brown mold stains on my ceiling and wall. Bath/shower water from the unit above mine would also seep through the ceiling into my bathroom and onto my kitchen stove because the wall tiles were falling off the bathtub area in the apartment above me. The tenant would throw the tiles off his landing down onto the ground three floors below.
There is a mouse problem in some of the units that do not have steel wool stuffed in the wall openings where pipes enter the apartments. A pest exterminating company was hired in January 2006 to address the rodent problem. A memo put on every door indicated that the apartments would now be subject to mandatory quarterly applications of pesticides in the kitchen cabinets under the sink and in the open area under the bathroom counter near the baseboard radiator, even if you did not have any mice infestation. If you are uncomfortable having strangers enter your apartment while you are at work, you will have to take time off from your job with less than twenty-four hours notice.
If you are a non-smoker, you will come home to an apartment reeking of cigarette smoke if you have smokers living beneath you. Cooking odors will also rise into your unit through the holes for the radiator and plumbing pipes. The tenant in the apartment below me also burned the foulest smelling incense 365 days a year. The smell was inescapable regardless of whether I opened my windows or kept them closed.
Snowplowing of the parking lots was done poorly during the winter of 2005-06. Several times I came home from work in the evening to find that the parking lot still had not been plowed even though the snowstorm ended at six that morning. Management does not enforce a policy requiring tenants to move their cars so that the lot can be plowed.
If you live in a middle unit, be prepared to have dead leaves, twigs, acorns, and trash falling from between the deck planks onto your landing when tenants on the top level sweep their entrance area. Even though the building was not far from the dumpsters, the tenants who resided above me would let about eight to ten large plastic bags of garbage accumulate over a period of several weeks on their front landing before taking the trash away. On one occasion, a bag broke and used cat litter, including feline fecal matter, fell down on my landing and all over the six mailboxes. These tenants did not clean up this mess, and neither did the maintenance staff, even though it was the complex that allowed cats at the time.
These apartments are now over-priced for their present condition. Should the developer ever succeed in attracting a wealthier clientele to this complex, they probably will not remain long-term renters when they discover the noise issue. But if you don't mind paying high rent to be kept awake at night by your upstairs/downstairs neighbor, while receiving a "couldn't-care-less" attitude from the staff of the property management company, then River Hollow is the place for you!
[I originally posted the above review in March, 2006. Here is a 2009 Update]: I moved out of River Hollow when my lease expired in 2006, but still live in town. I occasionally pass by the complex when I travel on South Water Street. After 4 1/2 years, the owners have done none of the improvements that they
promised in the 2004 Journal Inquirer article. They apparently did resurface each roof, but the roofs were originally supposed to be changed to a pitched style. A maintenance man told me before I moved out that the 1970s kitchen cabinets in my unit would only be polished and not replaced. In other apartments near mine, the kitchen counters and cabinetry had been totally removed and replaced, but it turns out that these cosmetic updates were done in only a few units by the previous owner so that he could get the highest price when he sold the complex. (He sold it for 7 1/2 million dollars in 2004, per the newspaper article).
The new owner's plan was to attract business professionals. But his plan had two flaws. A more affluent class of people would never even consider River Hollow with its exterior looking as shabby as it does. The siding is faded redwood with long black streak stains coming from every rusted nail head. The boardwalks are rotting and unsafe; the mail carrier's foot went through the deck planking on at least two occasions. The landscaping in many parts of the complex amounts to large tree stumps and bare dirt (the grass was long ago smothered by dead oak leaves that were rarely raked up).
Business professionals also would have no patience for the low caliber office staff that was clueless about dealing respectfully with the public and was incompetent with the bookkeeping. The rental staff should have been pros that were also of the business professional class.
The only thing that the new owner accomplished was to increase the rent by over $100 a month and apparently pocket a good deal of the revenue as profit because it looks like very little was physically re-invested in River Hollow. I do not regret moving out, nor do I miss having to work a ten-hour shift on less than three hours' sleep a night because of the noise at River Hollow keeping me awake.

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