I have lived in a Barry building at 1420 Chicago Ave. for several years now. While, in general the experience has not been as painful as was documented by the previous author, I must admit that if I had more cash, I would take it elsewhere.

I lived in this building because it had an elevator and interior laundry, in addition to having a 2 bedroom apartment and a/c. Since I have moved in, the service elevator has ceased to work, and Barry has made no efforts to correct this. The working elevator is often overburdened, especially on moving days, when it seems to break. And that is not the only time it has broken. And, since a broken elevator does not fall into a "high priority" category for Barry, if the elevator breaks on Friday evening, you can be it is going to be broken until Monday when Barry's office reopens.

In terms of the laundry in the basement, we have had problems with machine vandalism, which has often made certain machines inaccessible. The machines share exterior vents and a really ghetto water setup, which means that humid air fills all the dryers when any one is running. Also, I have had several experiences where when all the dryers are running, the electrical circuite for the laundry facility shuts down, leaving me with wet laundry and a $4.00 loss in quarters.

In terms of the a/c, I have no major complaints. It works just fine. But be sure to check yours BEFORE signing the lease, because I know that there are other units that have experienced problems in this area.

A major complaint I have is with our inoperable dishwasher, which has not worked for the last 2.5 years. We complained several times when moving in and it was suggested by the maintenance staff that we,"make sure the door is shut" when it is quite clear that there is a problem with the motor. I'm a grad student. I don't have time to devote my life to getting Barry to fix this, so we just don't use it. We complained on 3 seperate occasions and then decided to just deal with it.

In terms of repairs, I would suggest that you not expect them to do much. I did have an occasion where the pump in my toilet was leaking water all over my bathroom, and I fortunately turned off the water and figured out how to repair it myself, because it took the Barry night guy about 30 minutes to show up, and my whole apartment would have been flooded by then. We have also made several reparations to the plumbing ourselves, despite the fact that it stipulates in our lease that we are not allowed to do so. Again, this action was taken after several failed attempts by the Barry staff. In terms of our blinds on the windows, Barry replaced the vertical blinds that used to be there with cheap horizontal ones and did not install them correctly. The result of this action has been that we have had 3 different blinds fall from normal use.

I have also had problems with the windows in my bedroom. First of all, one of them does not close all the way, which is a bit of a problem in cold chicago weather. I used electrical tape to close that crack. There was also leaking from where the blinds were drilled into the ceiling near the windows, which I can only presume means that there is water leaking into the wall. The result is a large water bulge in the plaster near the window.

There are also stress fractures in numerous plaster walls. The bathroom tiles in one of our bathrooms is buckling, and there is also no ventilation in this room, which makes for a nice mold growth, requiring constant attention.

When we asked the company to repaint our apartment when we moved in and it was a mess, they did not make any arrangements with us, and sent two painters who painted the bathroom, painted the livingroom around our furniture(which was paint speckled as a result) and then took pictures of themselves with our camera.

We also asked the company to repair a sliding closet door which had been broken when we moved in. The ingenious staff's quick fix was to take a nail and use it in place of the caster which was needed. The result was that the door fell on my roommate's 67 year old father when he was trying to hang up his coat. the door now resides in our kitchen.

So, the long and short of our experience with Barry is that there is no service. Do not expect any. You can sue them, but there are stipulations in the lease which clear them of any misaction, so don't expect it to go anywhere. And if you can afford better, then by all means, DON'T DROP YOUR MONEY HERE.

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