Oh the lush wooded preserve of Briarwood Hills. I really do not know where to start. From the other reviews you can see that with Briarwood people either love it here or absolutely hate every minute of it.

I guess I should start with the good, as that will be pretty short. The secretary has always been nice, and the mailboxes are new; thats pretty much all I can say.

So the bad starts as soon as you walk in, the front door. The door looks like someone tried to break in with a crowbar one day, and is not properly fitted to the frame. Huge draft from the door, so much in fact that in the winter it would actually freeze over between the door and the frame.

The living room has one cable outlet, the only one in the entire apartment. The living room is also home to the ONLY window in the apartment that you can open for fresh air. One window.

The kitchen is home to a dishwasher that loves to empty the used water onto the floor instead of down the drain. The way the baseboards are set up its hard to clean under and perfect for all the 3249083 different kinds of insects that live at briarwood to to hide under, more on that later.

There is no closet space in the entire apartment. The living room closet has the hot water heater and the loft closet has a huge box fan for the roof. Do not come to briarwood with any belongings, because you will not have anywhere to put them.

The plumbing in the bathroom is terrible. Both the bath and sink do not drain. Bottles of liquid plumber are needed to take a shower without the water coming up to your knees.

Since the apartment was built in the 70's it was constructed with 2x4's and brick, which do nothing as fas as insulation. The apartment was so cold in the winter that you could measure it in degrees Kelvin. There is one electric heater in the living room to heat the entire apartment. To try and even keep the apartment above 60* would cost at least 300$ a month, as the electric is UI. Same goes for the summer months, without turning on the a/c, the apartment reaches well over 90*, and that's the truth. To stay at a "cool" 75* you will need the a/c blasting. The UI bills here are going to be very high, be warned.

The first time it rained at briarwood we found out about an unadvertised feature in both the living room and the bedroom,: waterfalls! The exposed brick walls would actually turn to waterfalls as the water poured in from the roof in multiple locations. This was apearently the norm in many apartments, and the roofs were all finally "replaced" in the fall. The "replaced" roof still continues to leak, just in new places, and not as heavily as before. Maintenance basically said there is nothing more they could do then patch the leaks the best they can and replace the carpet. Everything in the apartment is painted while, yet is now mostly brown due to water spots. Of course, I don't want it to seem like its all brown water spots, because there are some nice black mold spots that really tie the room together.

I saved the best for last, with the window replacements that took place in the spring. One day I came home to find that they were replacing the 3 huge windows in the loft. This was expected, as briarwood had left a letter earlier letting me know it was going to happen. What was not expected is that after they knocked out the old windows THEY DIDN'T HAVE NEW WINDOWS TO PUT IN!. The workers told me that new windows were on order and would be in within a week. They then patched up the 3 foot by 15 foot hole in the wall with plywood and called it a day. I'm no construction worker, but I would have maybe waited until the windows came in before smashing the old ones and then being like, "oh yeah, the windows will be in soon, sorry about that, it was your turn to be done today". The new windows did finally come a week later, as I had been sleeping in the living room since they knocked out the old ones. If you hadn't already assumed, the plywood wasn't exactly "water tight".

When the windows in the back room were to be replaced a few months later I knew I would be in for something special, and briarwood didn't let me down. When workers came to replace the skylight windows they stood on the roof and hacked into it with a crowbar. Seriously, they all used crowbars to get the skylights out from the outside. Ripped out the skylights and all the wood around them with a crowbar. This of course let to wood, paint, nails, shingles, and trim to be emptied into our apartment. I'm not talking about a little bit of dust and splinters, I'm talking entire shingles, wood, nails, etc enough that you couldn't even see the floor of the bedroom anymore. Management described this as "a little debris". However they later sent maintenance to haul away the "little debris", which took over an hour, which is strange because there was only a "little debris" To continue, the workers then used xacto knives to cit the opening to the new windows. No tape measures even, just eye balled exacto knife cuts. The new windows were installed, obviously they didn't come anywhere close to fitting, and I now have an excellent view of the roof in front and around the windows. Also, this exposed more black mold that was inside the roof.

If you havn't been scared away yet, I will continue. The walls here are paper thin, which is funny because they are brick. However, you can clearly hear the people around you talking, watching tv and going to the bathroom. There is constant banging from people all around you banging on the walls, floor and ceiling for what ever reason. To enhance the noise problem, there are these fun little fans installed on the roof that like to go off every 30 seconds and rattle like crazy.

Onto the bug problems. While we are lucky enough not to have mice like some other residents, our apartment is home to spiders, house centipedes and WASPS! Some of the house centipedes are HUGE, to the point where you would need a work boot or a baseball bat to try and take them on one on one. Laugh now, but live here and you won't think its funny.

I really do not know what else to say to warn you about what you would be in for if you signed a lease here. Oh, the "European style washer/dryer" right, yeah its a small combo washer dryer that I wouldn't trust putting my socks into.

"Exceptional luxury living with comfort and style -- without luxury prices."

If your idea of "luxury living" is basically paying to live in an apartment that was designed with an exacto knife, leaks, freezes, turns into a sauna, and is loud enough where you can't sleep, well then this is the place for you. If all of the above kind of makes the place sound like an overpriced slum, you might want to look somewhere else.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/26/2007
I'm glad your honest :)...the yes responses in here lately must be management, sure and heck isn't tenants

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