I lived here from August 2005 to April 2006.

When you drive up to the place and are shown around it looks nice...old buildings with nice architectural touches. The management of course shows you a nicely furnished model apartment.

What you get is nothing close.

The layout of the rooms is absolutely terrible...I could not put in normal furniture without the place being completely cramped. There are needless long hallways in the apartments that serve no purpose. Honestly the whole place needs to be gutted and redesigned floor-plan wise. You can't even use the fireplace, so it's just a waste of wall space. I was paying $995/month for this.

Access was EXTREMELY difficult. You are not allowed (in theory) to park on the street, although plenty of people do so as a matter of course, which means you can never park there for just a moment to unload. Instead you have to park in a far off parking lot. I'm talking 3 trips to bring in your groceries. There are something like 4 different keys so you can unlock all of the different doors to get into your building (apparently it would make too much sense to have access codes or key cards, hmm'). Laundry is equally inaccessible, mine was located down and across the street from my building...so I'm wondering around the outdoors with my laundry basket.

Want to have guests over' Good luck. They aren't allowed to park there either. You can't call down to security to let them into the guest parking of your lot. No, instead, you have to come down to ANOTHER BUILDING with your gate card and sign them in yourself before opening the gate for them.

Security is easily spotted on bicycles during the day in the summer. They supposedly have dogs, too. I saw them walking the dogs from the dog kennel at one point, but never did I see them walking around at night with dogs.

The West End itself is largely beautiful, but this SE Corner of the West End is kind of shady. Friends have been mugged or pickpocketed on the corner of Sisson and Farmington. All sorts of oddballs walking down Farmington at all hours. Heavy ambulance and fire department noise. There was also a hooker hanging out across the street. We need to get some Giuliani-style quality of life crime regulations in place and clear the bums out.

Others have noted the abundance of rats, this is probably typical for a city, as long as they weren't in the apartment I suppose I can't complain.

The final straw was when I was using the bathroom at 2 AM one winter morning, put on the fan, and out flew a hibernating bat.

I moved downtown. My apartment is laid out much better. I own mine, but if I rented it, it would cost me only $100 more a month than Clemens Place, yet it provides garage parking, elevators, central air and heat, washer and dryer on the same floor as my apartment, security desk and doorman, and ample guest parking where guests can sign themselves in.

Clemens Place is a complex of beautiful old buildings that hide slipshod and badly designed interiors, inconvenient amenities, and are at the edge of a questionable neighborhood.

Think twice and use your money better!

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