I moved in the day they opened (actually toured the place in a hard hat before completion!) and overall was very pleased with my time there. There were some construction glitches (kitchen drawer blocked by oven, poorly painted walls) but they've done a lot to fix anything fixable.

My biggest gripe was parking. Not the ridiculous monthly charge, not the lack of visitor parking, but the spaces themselves. I have a Honda CR-V that barely fit in my original parking space. I looked up the widths of some of the cars nearby mine and found out that the spaces in our area allowed only a 1 1/2" clearance on either side. After many months I was finally reassigned another space, but beware that many of the spaces are tight and not easy to maneuver around. I ended up with many dings from my parking neighbor.

Very infrequently it got a bit noisy from my upstairs neighbors, but the majority of the noisecomes from Mass Ave sitting right outside your window. Arlington Center is quiet as town centers come, but the MBTA does come grumbling by every 10 minutes or so. The noise in my apartment came mostly from the mechanical contraption outside my window that whirred at all hours of the day, but I probably did save a few bucks on rent by taking a unit near the thing.

It was just too expensive for me to stay there once local rent prices dropped a bit. Rent for my small 2BR was $1950 $150/mo. parking -- about $500 more than I'm paying for a gorgeous house with garage parking and a nice yard in Belmont Center -- but I think the prices have balanced out for new renters there. I might have stayed longer if we'd been able to successfully negotiate a lower rent (on par with what we'd heard newcomers were getting) but that didn't work.

I think the Legacy is perfect if you prefer shiny and new over local character. I've gone back and forth between the two for many years and finally settled on old and quaint, but if I change my mind again, I'd definitely give the Legacy another shot.

And I agree with the other reviewer -- Dave is the BEST!

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