Pros:

Nice looking apartments, definitely nicer than other properties in Bloomington.
I have a washer and dryer in unit - another hard to find option in town.
Generally quiet where we live.
Lots of families with kids (we have some ourselves).
Free gym facilities.
Two pools on site, which means college kids usually congregate around one pool and one pool is family friendly.
Convenient to the bus line.
Walking distance to the mall and Bloomingfoods East.

Cons:

Overpriced! I pay $1210 a month for a two bedroom with a loft. I could rent a nice, quiet house for that price.

Maintenance!!! The guys that fix things are very friendly and nice but I have had maintenance to my apartment to fix my AC about seven times (constant issues), they've replaced my garbage disposal, replaced my microwave and had to do repairs on my dishwasher and hot water heater (twice). It's gotten to the point that I know the maintenance guys by name. We've only lived here for nine months!! Even with a fireplace, it's freezing in winter and humid and hot, almost unbearably so, in the summer. The maintenance guys told us that they are supposed to send someone around to replace the filters every thirty days but so far nobody has shown up to do so. In nine months we've purchased five air filters for the A/C as it stops even the little cooling/heating it does do as soon as it gets a bit dirty.

We had an issue where we recieved six months of free rent on our washer and dryer. We forgot the due date of the first payment, and assumed the office would let us know. They did...21 days later, with a late notice on our door. Further, they charged us $4 a day in late fees! They refused to waive any of them, claiming we should have looked at our lease each month to be sure we didn't owe more money. What'!

They moved three single undergrads into the apartment below ours. It took loads of complaining to get the office to shut them up in the evenings! I don't know what they were thinking...the other three apartments in this building are occupied by grad students with children, so obviously putting the party animals here was a bad idea. After weeks of them waking my kids up at midnight with bass loud enough that you could feel it through the couch, the office finally sent them a letter and things quieted down. However, they still play loud, obnoxious games in the yard and profane around my kids as well as occupy all of the parking spaces for our building!

Overall:

You can do better!

Yes, they look nice, but as with many things that beauty is only skin deep!

Edited after completing our lease, to add:

After completing my lease I can honestly say things never truly improved. The neighbors would be quiet when we were home (an addtional three calls to the police fixed the problem) which was all that mattered. Parking remained an issue until the end of our lease. When it came to getting our $450 deposit back, even our spotless (and I mean, spotless) apartment only garnered a return of $128 of the deposit. It seems the other reviews are accurate and the property managers do tend to view the deposit as "theirs" from the start and have no intention of ever returning it. Even though the manager that cleared our apartment found no damage other than the need for a fresh coat of paint (which should be expected whenever there is apartment turnover, and could be avoided if they'd use something besides the cheapest flat paint in the world) and even though she made the remark that our apartment was one of the cleanest she'd ever seen, we had to fight for our deposit.

Maintenance remained an issue as well. One day, while walking downstairs from the loft my husband slipped and grabbed the bannister for support. The bannister actually broke away from the wall and he fell down the entire flight of stairs, luckily only breaking one toe and not his neck. We continued to have issues with our A/C as well. Be cautious about putting up lighting in the dining room area. They will put it up for free when you move in, but if you want your chandelier back you'll pay $74 to have them come out and remove it when you leave (or you can leave it for them, free of charge, of course).

Dog mess is a terrible issue here. Rude tenants will walk their puppies down the sidewalk and leave the mess behind. Even with doggie poop sacks spread throughout the facility, this is a major problem. Have a family' Think your yard is safe place for your kids to run around' Think again, unless you want them dragging dog mess into your apartment every single time. I finally got to the point where I had to play dog-poop-gestapo and yell at people when I saw them not cleaning up their animal mess off of the walkway up to my apartment. Seriously...the sidewalk up to my apartment would be doggie doo covered otherwise.

Of minor note is the aggravation of having every single delivery person unable to find your apartment due to the strange address system and layout.

Our biggest issue by far was that we were told when we moved in that we could get an 18 month lease, but then when we signed they only gave us 12 months. At that time I was assured we'd just resign another 6 month lease for the rest of our time. BS! We had to sign a 9 month lease, even though we told them we were on military orders from the start. To top things off' They raised our rent! We were mature, prompt paying tenants with no issues and they raised our rent another $30 a month for the "special short term lease!"

To make matters even more frustrating, when our offical orders came in that we needed to leave three months before the lease was up, we turned them into the office. Because we were on orders, we are permitted, with 30 days notice, to break our lease. The manager tried to tell us we were wrong (hello, we've been doing this for 16 years) and that we had to pay 60 days rent for leaving if we were military. Believe it or not, she would not budge or look up the protecting act until we printed out information about it online and asked for the property owner's phone number! The office staff are ridiculously rude and stubborn, refusing to listen to reason.

Bottom Line: This place is NOT worth the expense. If you can afford the rent for a 2-3 bedroom here, you can afford to rent a small house and I suggest you do so. If you rent a smaller place, thinking the attractive apartments and the fact that the community is billed as "quiet" will be worth the added expense, you're wrong! Rent elsewhere! And if you're over the age of 25 you might consider another place to live. The issues we had made me feel like a crochety old neighbor at the ripe old age of 27.

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