Tiger Plaza

I lived here from 2001 to 2003. When I first moved in, I had four roommates in a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom apartment. It was a great deal because it was split between so many roommates ($305 each). At that time, we had all the present services and amenities, plus free movie channels.
Two of the roommates moved out after that year, so the remaining one and I stuck around and got a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. This is where the horror story starts. Now our rent was $425 each, and they took away the free movie channels. We had horrible maintenance problems throughout that year. The air conditioner broke time and time again, and it was rarely operable for more than a couple of weeks straight. Our internet access was regularly disrupted, and we had no idea when it may be restored. All three of the pools on the property were green year-round. They were very rarely clean enough to swim in.
Oh, I left something out--all of the 2 bedroom apartments are designed as if they're intended for a married couple living with a small child. One room is tiny, and the other is ridiculously huge, with walk in closets. The vast majority of people who live here are college kids, and any two college kids that want to room together here are just going to have to deal with the forced disproportionality.
During that stay, my car was also vandalized on several occasions. On any given weekend night, my roommates and I could view fights between drunken neanderthals from our balcony. It's most likely these kinds of drunken rogues that were responsible for the damage to my car and probably many more.
Once my lease was up for the second year, I moved out and vowed never to come back. I even wanted to launch a major anti-advertising campaign against Tiger Plaza, but of course I procrastinated until I was too busy with other stuff. I think it was the fall after I moved out that they put the gates up. They used that for a reason to drastically increase rental rates, and they've been increasing them ever since.
I moved to a different complex for the next three years, and faced with a huge decision of whether to move to Cleveland for law school or stay in case I got accepted to LSU, I let my lease run out there without renewing. I decided to stay in Baton Rouge at the last minute, so I had to find a new place with very little time. Needless to say, the only places still available were either 30 minutes away or Tiger Plaza. So out of a last-minute move of desperation, I found myself moving back into Tiger Plaza.
Before signing a lease, I informed the leasing agent of all the problems I had experienced before, and she assured me that everything was fine now. Of course, I didn't have much of a choice anyway, so I signed the lease, and here I am about halfway through it, once again hating Tiger Plaza, but this time I definitely will never return. And this time, I've got a whole slew of new complaints.
I live in one of the buildings that has one side within the gates and one side out of the gates. There's a walk-in gate on one side of the building and on the other side (closest to the railroad track), there's no gate at all. That whole side of the complex is without gates, so anyone can just go around that side and get to any place within the gates. So what's the point of the gates? Again, it was just a reason to increase rates.
For the apartments on the side of my building (and others like it) that isn't within the gates, the rent is $15 less per month. They don't get an access key to the gates or the privelege to park inside them. The rest of us pay $15 more per month to park inside the gates, under the guise that parking there is safer because the gates keep out unwanted people, but I've already told you how well that works.
The walk-in gate, on the side of my building that has gates, is usually open. It was somehow broken for a while (the spring mechanism that pulls it shut was broken), so management had it CHAINED and LOCKED shut--genius idea--to keep people out--even though there are no gates just on the other side of the building. I regularly park outside the gate by that walk-in gate and walk to my apartment because it's actually closer than I could park if I fought over a spot inside the gates. So the result of these idiots chaining the gate shut was just a huge inconvenience to me because I'd park and see that it was chained, then walk around the building.
Regardless of where I park, there's no way for me to ever get to my car from my apartment, or vice versa, without having to walk through muddy or flooded sidewalks. After I dealt with this for 8 months, they put stepping stones down on the sidewalks to provide a temporary solution. That temporary solution will probably last several years.
There's also a train track about 30 yards away from my apartment. A train comes by several times a day, but that doesn't bother me so much. Every night, a train passes at about 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. blasting its horn the whole time, and the whole apartment shakes from the vibrations of the train. As a matter of fact, it's passing by now. Excuse me, it's 11:00 p.m. tonight. But it'll be back around 1 in the morning as always.
Most apartment complexes give you until the 5th of the month to pay rent before incurring a late charge, which is usually $25. Here, if you pay on the 2nd, you have to pay $50 extra. The ONLY good thing about Tiger Plaza is location, location, location. And by that, I just mean proximity to LSU, not absence of crime. About a year ago, a guy was car-jacked at gunpoint right after leaving his girlfriend's apartment in Tiger Plaza. I know this because I parked close by right after it happened, and he came to me and asked me to call the police.
So again, the only good thing about Tiger Plaza is location. Because of this, they are allowed to get away with these atrocious prices and injustices. I moved in at the end of July. By December, management was already sending me requests to either renew my lease for another year or give them a written intent to vacate (so they could go ahead and pre-book my unit). The early renewal offer guaranteed a special early bird rate that would lock in my new rent price at only $120 more than what it is now. What a deal!
Tiger Plaza and R.W. Day & Associates (the real estate company that owns the complex, as well as several others around the city) represent the embodiment of imersonal corporate exploitation of college students and opportunistic rate raising. I will never live at Tiger Plaza or ANY R.W. Day property again, and this time I mean it.

Recommended: NO Overall Rating

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