Weirdly enough, these conflicting reviews are all true. It is a nice place to live - new everything, in-unit washer and dryer, there is a nice pool and barbecues, a gym and internet cafe, free internet in the apartments, indoor parking and, maybe best of all, your own apartment-size central heating and cooling and hot water tank. And, yes, maintenance is there pretty quickly to take care of issues. How many landlords can you say that about'

But...

1. It is noisy, and the source of the noise is different in various buildings. At the south end of building C and on the west side of building A you are facing the pool and worse, the Metra tracks. At the east end of the complex you have Ridge Avenue with its sirens and forever-going traffic. At the north side of building D, you get the Evanston Works Yard, with snow dumping by big trucks in the middle of the night (and only at night!), and a snow melter (only in Evanston!) running a Diesel engine all night. And yes, your neighbors may well be a noisy, spoiled little brat who doesn't care about anybody else. We got lucky in that respect, because the walls are thin. I guess the quietest apartments are those facing the northern part of the courtyard. There, you only need to worry about your neighbors.

I should mention this - we took to having the central air fan on at all times at night (not the auto setting). It provided some background white noise, which drowned a lot of the community noise.

2. The management is a bit neurotic. I thought the property manager got better with time, while the office people got worse. For the past couple of years, you definitely needed to contact the property manager to have anything done. Those other dummies did not take any note of any problems you reported.

3. It's a business and they are there to make money, and you are the money source. You will notice that, over and over again. No fuzzy-wuzzy warm-hearted landlords there.

4. It's true, the Reserve is on the eastern border of a not very nice neighborhood.

Would we live there again' Yes. It is less expensive than Park Evanston or Evanston place (location is the trade-off), but the units and amenities are just as nice. I am sure that there is quite a bit of community noise in those places as well - even more spoiled brats live there.

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