I lived in both of these Berstein buildings for a combined time of almost 3 years. I am thankfull to be moving out. As a long time resident of both buildings, I believe that I am in a unique position to review the pros and cons of both buildings, and the managment.

PROS:
1. Location, but only if you attend GW University. Otherwise, its a mediocre location in DC. The neighborhood is safe, but filled with college kids. Its also a touch far from the nightlife in Dupont/Adams Morgan.

2. The office does a good job of taking packages if you live in Potomac Park. However, if you live in the York, you have to walk over to the rental office in the Potomac building to get your packages. This sucks if they are large items as the buildings are one long block apart.

3. Pretty quick responses to maintainace requests.

CONS:
1.Loud, oboxious residents. Most of the people who live here are students at GWU or the Corcoran School of Art, and they treat it like a dorm. The building is loud, trash is left all over the place, and there has been a lot of graffiti and vandelism in the past 8 months.

2. If your apartment faces the rear of the building at Potomac Plaza (75% of the aparts. do) it is LOUD! The alley is constantly loud from truck traffic, cars, people, drunks, trash removal, etc. The sounds are amplified due to the alley, and you won't need an alarm clock, as the sound of the trash trucks for both the apartment AND the State Plaza Hotel will wake you up at 9 AM every day.

3. Expensive for what you get. These are old buildings and they are showing their age. Bernstein charges a high rent to start with, then raises rent at least 10% year like clockwork. I do mean AT LEAST 10%. Then againm, the rental market in DC is soft now, so they are running move in specials for the apartments for the first time in years.

4. Both buildings had rat/mice problems in the past 2.5 years. The York had huge rats living in the ivy near the front exntrance for quite some time. These are the huge Norway rats. They look like small cats. The Potomac building had mice for at least 8 months. It's unverning to see little brown mice scamper across your floor from underneath the vents at night.

5. No individual heating/cooling controls. The managment decides when you will get heat and whe you will get AC. In the past they have been horribly slow in turning on the AC, and the non-insulated windows make the apartments rather hard to keep warm in the winter. The new manager has been a complete asine idiot. The old manager, Barbara, a least tried to listen to the residents, this new one, does not. When we had a heat wave about 2 weeks ago, the manager repsonded to our requests of AC with a building-wide letter that stated "the AC will be turned on, on May 15, in the meanwhile open your windows and enjoy the refreshing breeze." Yes, this is the type of service you get for $1000+ a month.

6. Kitchens are poorly equiped. The oven/ranges are old and SMALL. They cannot fit 4 medium sized pots and pans on the burners at one time. The WORST parts of the kitchen are the lack of a garbage disposal and the lack of ANY kitchen venting. Thats right, they do not give you a range hood so if you cook, airborne greese gets on everything in the kitchen, and the smell/smoke from cooking a meal will linger for a day. This may not be an issue for sandwich making college kids, but if you intedn to cook, the kitchens are inadequet at best.

7. No parking. Inadequete street parking. You can place yourself on a wait list in order to have the honor of paying an extra 150 a month for parking, but I have never seen an indoor space come up in the 3 years I have lived in both buildings.

As I type this message, I can hear loud stereo music from another resident whose apartment faces the rear of the buildings. Its good msuic, but I would rather listen to my own and not someone else's. This building is very overpriced for what you get. Look at other places like the Statesman for better facilities. Heck, this entire neighborhood is overpriced, but you can do better then the York/Potomac Park.

User Responses
From: jambalya	Date: 09/22/2005
For obvious reasons, the apartment posting I read didn't imply any of the negatives you've raised. In particular, I love peace and quiet and love to cook. So, this doesn't sound like a fit for me. Thanks for talking me out of big a mistake!
From: ericslove	Date: 03/23/2006
I agree with this review entirely. I lived at the York for one year and in that year I had to move to a different apartment within the building because of a disgusting cockroach problem. My neighbor across the hall was living in filth but the management had done nothing to remove him and thus my roommate and I had to live with a massive cockroach infestation. It was disgusting to say the least. While complaining to management over in Potomac Park, my roommate was treated in an extremely rude manner and all that was done was an exterminator came by to set down some little plastic roach traps. It was a joke. I finally called Bernstein and complained and my roommate and I were immediately moved to a nice, clean apartment on the 7th floor. We had no complaints about the new room--it was quiet, clean, and very nice. There was the occasional noise from the streets but let's face it, if you're going to live in a major city you're going to hear these things. There are college students in the building that treat it as a dorm rather than an apartment complex but it's the luck of the draw when it comes to rooming next to them or not. Personally, both apartments I lived in at the York were quiet but I have walked past some with music booming. You take your chances. The location is very nice and safe. It's about an equal distance from both Adams Morgan and Georgetown. It's also right by the tunnel that takes you out of the city to Northern VA via Route 66 so it's great if you need to commute out of DC. Overall, I would recommend this apartment complex to others but I would definitely make sure you thoroughly inspect your room for creepy crawlies before you sign the lease.

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