I signed a 6 month shortem lease(Feb to July 2007), so automatically $50 fee is added to each month's rent. The best thing this apt has is you can paid via any major credit cards, so you get a little cashbacks/mileages/points from the credit card you use to pay your monthly rent.

The worst part is the central AC/HEAT. It got pretty hot couple days in May (up 80 degs) here in Chicago, and my studio was like a furnace since the there's no AC b/c the Pavilion apt doesn't turn on the AC till end of May (They claimed it was the city rule to wait till end of May before AC can be turned on, I think it is BS). I was dying of heat exhaustion a bit. Although the winter time with centralize heat was nice since you are only paying the electricity to turn on the fan to blow the heat into your apt. Nevertheless, the fan was rather loud when you turn it on. I adjusted to it after a few nights. The sound barrier is pretty poor, if you had the fan off, then you can easily hear your next door's conversation if they were screaming. I often just turn on music or tv to diffuse that sound.

I got an upper floor in the 10 floor, so I have a decent view of downtown from far far away. I rented a studio for $820 $50 (short term lease fee for every month) to a total of $870 per month. I think it is a bit pricey considering I only have like 700 sq. ft.

My best advice is to buy a built-in tuner LCD tv cuz you can get certain HD channels: FOX, ABC, and NBC from the wall.

A plus is that they do have a garage parking, so it would be wise to rent one for the winter (I think it is like $100 to $200 a month) if you have a new car. I didn't use it cuz I have an older car (year 1999).

Another plus is that Pavilion just recently installed ALL NEW WASHERS AND DRYERS. The payment system is a smart card system, so you can use your credit card to load balance. Love it if you want to save your quarters for downtown meter parking.

My reason for picking this place is b/c I travel a bit, and parking at O'hare would have cost me a lot of money. Living at Pavilion, you can walk 3 Blocks to ride the "L" (Cumberland Station), which is only 1 stop away from O'hare. You save a lot on parking fee for long trips. As for riding the "L" to the LOOP, it all depends on the time of the day.

One more negative about Pavilion. You get a different smell each day as you walk through the hall ways due to many different cultures living at this place. Someday the smell makes you hungry, but someday the smell will give you a headache.

Another good or bad point, depending on how you look at it. If you get packages from UPS, DHL, or UPSP, there's a UPS store that will accept it for you for a charge like 50 cents to 2 dollars depending on the size of the package. They will hold it for you for like 3 to 5 days then it gets send back. The annoying thing is the mail box where you get your shipping slip notice sticker will sometimes be removed or misplaced by idiotic people from your mailbox, so you might not even know you had a package delivered to you and waiting to be picked up in the Pavilion UPS store. I often checked all the package slips stickers around my building's mailbox in case some idoitic person misplaced it.

Another minus is that if you are like me that like to use cell phone for your one phone system only, then you better hope it is a local chicago number or else you will have to either get a local chicago number so you can buzz people / delivery man in at the door or you simiply pass on the feature of buzzing in people. Cuz the door buzzing system will only allow local chicago area code.

In summary, I give this place a B-. Good luck on your apt hunting in Chicago.

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