The good guys in the management office left this building shortly after I moved in last year following the merge of two management companies. The bottom line is: For what you pay in rent, you do not get your money's worth.

Just after moving in my unit last year, one of my kitchen cabinet doors literally fell off one of the hinges forcing me to tape the door shut until maintenance arrived to fix it. I had a daily pool of water on the floor caused by the frig which had to be fixed; my toilet would not stop running, which also needed repairs; and the bathroom mirror trim fell off the mirror completely. I've witnessed the top layer of the cheap kitchen pass through countertop separate when it got cold out and the glue obviously did not hold, and I had my dishwasher go out completely, which was only one of many washers they replaced in the building because they are the original dishwashers from when the building was built. Things are beginning to show their age, and updating is way past due.

There were times when the water in the pool during the winter was so disgustingly hot, you could actually have cooked pasta in that water faster than you could on top of your own stove. If you are a dedicated lap swimmer, you suffer. Either that, or the pool had strange floaties or debris surfacing from time to time, and when you grabbed the sides, your hands hit slime. In essence, the pool got that filthy before it got cleaned, and when the pool was finally shut down for cleaning, there was no general notification, so you made the trip down to the pool only to find out it was closed.

Management depends on "issue" problems when it comes time to flicking the switch for the AC, so in the meantime, you suffer big time until those "issues" are rectified and they've decided you've suffered long enough. Then is when you thank Mother Nature for cold fronts passing through, as without AC in the building, it made life miserable and a good night's sleep impossible. Add to that the exterior restoration work that was done this year and being instructed by management to keep our windows shut, made for no air at all. It doesn't get more obnoxious than that.

Moving out was another joke. Having reserved and confirmed the freight elevator for moving day a month in advance for the time slot of 9 to 12 and having professional movers working at a rate of 135 an hour, the movers had to wait for several trips involving a building delivery of commercial carpeting which should have been scheduled AFTER a resident's move-out and not during it.

The old saying of "you get what you pay for" generally holds true, but it sure didn't at 420 E. Ohio. With rents downtown all at inflated levels, you're best to check out other properties before signing on here in order to get more bang for your buck. I've lived in 4 other buildings during nearly a decade of downtown living, and there are others giving a better return on monthly rent investments.

If you decide to move to 420 E. Ohio, save your moving boxes. The increase of over a hundred dollars a month (10%) in rent just wasn't worth it for me to stay another year for the entertainment of watching countertops split and being boiled alive in the pool.

Last one out, shut off the lights.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/13/2008
I use the pool several times a week and it has never been too hot. If anything, it is on the cool side.
From: Anonymous	Date: 03/07/2008
I use the pool and it's boiling, are you one of the handicapped section 8 people?
From: rory55	Date: 04/30/2008
why do people keep saying section 8, section 8 is not accepted at this property and it never has since it's been built.
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/28/2009
i think that was a sarcastic comment hahah.
From: Anonymous	Date: 04/04/2009
Whoever wrote this review and thinks this building is subject to a section 8 contract or a HAP contract is ill informed. I am a commercial real estate professional with no affiliation with management that happens to live in the building and can confidently state that there are no section 8 contracts attributed to this building. Trust me, if there was a section 8 contact here you would definitely know. They typically have to allocated 20% or 40% of the rentable units to the section 8 program to receive the tax abatement associated with the contract. If you want to see a section 8 building, walk across the street to Lakeshore Plaza. There are a few handicap people in the building, but they are very friendly and I think it is nice that the building can accommodate them. They live here most likely because the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is two blocks away, one of the best in the world. Plus I really don't see what is wrong with handicap people... Thanks!
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/04/2009
I am very much looking forward to moving out of here. Literally, the only thing you pay for is a view - if you're lucky enough to have an east-facing apartment. Otherwise, I can't understand why anyone would stay here. I'm waiting for the new apartments across the street to open. 420 E. Ohio has the most rude office staff. Brook was previously the property manager and she made it a really friendly environment to live. Now that she's gone, I don't even know who the new guy is...J.R. or something. Have never seen him. He lets his assistant, Lauren, take charge and everyone - tenants and staff do everything to avoid her. Unfortunately, she lives in the building. When you see her, it's like running into the mean principal of your grade school....everyone runs. We pay her salary! The building itself is very dated and run down. The laundry room, if you are lucky, has about half the washers/dryers working. Oh, but there are no signs on the broken machines so you end up losing money until you find ones(s) that work. The elevators are painful. For some reason, Lauren doesn't know how to reserve properly when people move in/out so many times the entire building of 40 floors has ONE elevator working. It's not unusual that I have had to wait 10-15 minutes to squeeze onto one that wasn't full. My heat only worked about 40% of the time last winter. So, if the engineers couldn't get it working, I slept with multi-layers of quilts. I have bugs in my kitchen and others I've talked to have them, too. They aren't roaches or ants but little black bugs that come and go with the season. Disgusting nonetheless. Someone I know turned in his sheet for a storage locker but they threw his stuff out anyway becuse of poor record keeping when they were doing their "audit." Anyway, my point is, there's a ton of clean-up, updating, cleaning house of awful staff that needs to be done in order to keep people here - especially with all the deals on new places all over the neighborhood.

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