I have to preface by saying that I have enjoyed living in the Conservatory in my two years there. I have had no quarrels with neighbors, I've had no issues with staff or overly traumatic incidents. I think, however, that I am lucky. I have not had many incidents with fixtures or appliances breaking. I think I had one incident with the air conditioner, and it took them two trips out to repair it.

That said:
- If it rains, there will be roaches. Big ones. Lots of them. To be fair, I have never had any actually in my apartment. I am pretty sure it is only because I am not on ground level though.

- There are rats. Huge ones. It seems they are contained entirely to the dumpster area, which is fairly separated from most of the buildings. A baby rat got lost once and ended up in our stairwell area once. It was cute, yet disconcerting. Again, I would not want to be ground floor, especially in any of the buildings near the dumpster.

- My car was broken into. The radio I had in my car was pretty cheap, since I can discount myself at the electronics store and can install it myself. The entire statement I got from the leasing office was "We're sorry to hear that. How unfortunate." This sort of is a lead in to the next bullet.

- The gate is always open. I feel kind of gypped that I paid $50 extra for a keychain remote for the gate. I think I've had to use it maybe a dozen times in the past 6 months, total. In the last two months in particular the gate has never been closed to my memory.

- The lease renewal incentives I was offered were frankly pretty insulting. I can have either ONE custom accent wall, OR they will provide me with ONE new appliance but only IF the maintenance crew decides that it is in need of replacing. You're going to raise my rent anyway, at least spend it on something useful, like any of the above or below points.

- The groundskeeping is lackluster. All trees, few green spaces, no flowers. Spaces that are not visible from the roads inside the complex such as spaces that are behind buildings that were obviously maintained under previous ownerships are no longer maintained. It's clear that there were nice stones places as walkways between buildings that you could use as an alternative to sidewalks that are now lost under dirt, mud, and growth. My deck space looks out to brown and the mud attracts insects. It's only useful as storage.

There's a lot of points that I can't speak on, however. I never made use of any of the provided amenities in the complex, like on site car wash (currently closed due to drought), on-site laundry, pools, fitness center, etc. Any time I would have, I usually just ended up in my friend's complex, using his larger, more expensive, better cared for amenities. Admittedly, not an option for a lot of people, but it says a lot when you can honestly say that you wouldn't even consider using your complex's facilities.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/28/2008
Thanks, your review was both helpful and honestly critical. I was considering moving here and by reading your review I can have some things in mind to better weigh my options. :)
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/23/2008
I currently live in the Conservatory and this review is 100% accurate. I think the gate is the part that irritates me the most. It is always open. Real safe. And it isn??????t really a coincidence that every time it is broken, which is often, there is some sort of ??????incident??????. The laundry facility to terrible??????dirty and not well maintained. You have to wade through balls of lint to try to use a washer or dryer??????that is if they aren??????t out of order. The rats by the dumpster are scary, scary big. I actually had to stop my car before to allow one to pass by on my way outside of the complex. I think he gave me a little nod of thanks as he went toward the apartment buildings.

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