I'm going on my second year here in a loft / studio unit.

My experience has been very good. I've lived at a few other apartments in the area, and in talking with friends that also live at various places in the area, here's my breakdown:

Very good:
Maintenance requests are dealt with in under 24 hours around 95% of the time.
Trash valet service is free.
Very safe area, in my experience.

Pros:
Noise - I don't hear anything from my neighbor. The only noise comes from the parking lot.
Aesthetics - Well maintained grounds make for a nice neighborhood.
Staff - While at times some of them can be condescending, they have been the nicest people that I've dealt with in my apartment experiences.
Parking - My unit has a garage attached, which is the biggest factor keeping me here. However, parking for the other units does seem to get pretty difficult. I've never had a problem with guests finding parking spots though.

Cons:
Price - I got lucky and snagged a promotional offer. I don't think I'd pay full price here, as the rates are considerably higher than some of the surrounding apartment complexes.
Insulation - My apartment has little to no insulation, and the A/C unit is pretty old, so the temperature fluctuates a lot and makes a dent in my electric bill.
Modernization - I'm sure this WAS a very luxurious complex in the mid to late 90's. It seems that a lot of the units haven't been kept up with the times as much, and so some parts of my apartment are starting to show some age.
Mold - I don't know whether I have any or not. I don't feel sick at my unit. I have seen other posts about mold on here, though, and it doesn't entirely surprise me. If I found solid evidence of mold in my apartment, I would think that the staff would try to fix it, based on my past experiences with them (they've always been helpful to me).

User Responses
From: 123mom	Date: 07/13/2009
Well, that makes sense then, if you were looking at the reviews of apts in the area and also haven't had any issues with Echelon and wanted to say good things. I hope I didn't offend you as well. I have just seen in the past where staff members post after bad reviews are made. And yes, you are correct- their maintenance guys are great and very fast in responding to issues, except for the leaky windows. Good luck in the search for your next place if you end up moving and hopefully, you don't have issues with the garage. The last apt they rented to us had a dent on the garage door and through reading old postings on this site about their mold issues, I found out that the family who lived in the apt before us had mold problems as well. I emailed the person who originally posted the comments and he even told me that upon their lease ending, Echelon tried to blame them for the large dent on the garage door, even after they had a police report filed due to another car running into it. It even ended up being the same garage that they rented out to us when we moved in and it still had the dent. You might already do this(this is also a suggestion to those of you reading this that may not), but I would suggest taking pictures of the apartment before you turn in the keys and make sure that the carpet shows in them, so that they don't say that you stained the carpet and bill you for cleaning fees. You might not have those type of issues but it's just to cover yourself and also lastly ask to be present on their final walk through of the property. They normally do it after you turn in your keys, so we set up a time with the assistant property manager for one. Oh, one more thing, if you decide to move, make sure you put in your change of address early enough. We had proof of delivery for a package of shoes from Macys that was signed for by the assistant manager from UPS and we called her about them and she said she didn't see the package.
From: sholdaj1	Date: 07/13/2009
I am a tenant. I used this website pretty extensively while looking for apartments before, and my biggest problem was that a vast majority of people posting were those who had issues and wanted to (no offense) "gripe" about them. I was also using the website to look for a new apartment to move to, once my 12 month lease ended. I didn't find anything better for the price (mind you, I lucked out and got a discount). So I just wanted to share my thoughts on why I chose to stay at (the apartment complex formerly known as) Echelon at the Reserve. If I was going to move anywhere nearby, I would probably go to Inlet Bay. I have a few friends there, and they've said (mostly) good things. The biggest difference between Echelon & Inlet that I've found, through talking with my friends, is the response time from maintenance. With 1 exception (the exception is due to quibbling over who is to blame for putting holes in my garage wall - Brighthouse, or Echelon), every maintenance request has been resolved in under 36 hours, and most always within 24 hours.

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