I've lived here for two years. I am a professional who relocated to Worcester a couple of years ago. I planned on moving out after a year, but ended up staying more for convenience than for absolutely loving the place, but I have been comfortable, and (again, for convenience), I'll probably stay another year. There ARE some good things. I have found maintenance to be quite good at responding to complaints, which have been relatively few. The grounds ARE nicely laid out -- there are always flowers blooming, etc. I have NEVER had parking trouble. The management has always been friendly, nice, and responsive, although there is always turnover in the management staff. The location is great -- close to Worcester, less than an hour to Boston. If you want the Commuter Rail, it is probably about a 10-15 minute drive to the Westborough stop, or the Worcester stop, but the CR isn't very convenient generally.

There are some downsides. As some of the other posters have said, the grounds are full of kids. There's always a group of them playing football on the front lawn, which I don't think is a bad thing. In fact, they all seem to play around together nicely -- young kids and old. The problem is that there are SO MANY of them, and they do tend to take over the place in the evenings. They're constantly in and out of the weightroom (and goofing out on the equipment), forget going to the pool, and they walk down the streets as if it were a sidewalk. I've never seen any of them doing anything bad, but when you have gangs of kids roaming around, it does unsettle you sometimes. I've only seen one incident that gave me concern about crime, and that was a bunch of kids hanging outside my door one night (I didn't recognize any of them, and I don't think they were the kids from the complex). Later one of them was caught trying to steal a hubcap, and I understand that the police found drugs on some of them when they rounded them up. The police responded IMMEDIATELY, and I have never seen anything since. I have never seen anything that made me feel unsecure since.

One tip -- it seems to me that the building over by itself, next to the tennis courts, is the least desirable in this respect. My suspicion is that if you try to get put in the main area, you'll be much happier.

I said the grounds are well-maintained, which is true, but the buildings themselves are somewhat shoddy. The siding is coming loose in a number of areas, the stairways need a fresh coat of paint, that kind of thing.

The weightroom is not very pleasant, but it is usable. The equipment is run-down, it smells bad, the remote control for the TV is lost, and it is in a very secluded area, which might make it uncomfortable at night if you were alone. The pool is nice, and there's a lifeguard, but they charge you $10 to bring guests, and you can only bring 2 per apartment. This is a new policy, which is probably how they can afford a lifeguard.

Most of the neighbors are great -- they've been here for a while. Others are terrible -- and this is not the management's fault. They leave trash on the landings, in the parking lot, and on Monday mornings there is a huge pile of trash outside the compactor because no one has compacted it over the weekend. I have found that noise goes with the territory in these kinds of places. There is occassional noise in the parking lot at night, and if there's noise in the stairwell you'll hear it in the apartment. There are a few who have rather large dogs, and I can't say they're always pros at cleaning up after the dogs.

In general, over the two years that I've been here, the quality of the complex has declined somewhat. When we arrived, it was a much more pleasant community. It was then managed by the Avalon company, and they really made an effort to keep things nice. There were free papers on Wednesday and coffee and donuts on Tuesday. As soon as the new management came in, that stopped -- which is a good metaphor for the change.

Right now, however, this might be the best place to rent in Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury Commons is managed by the same people, and it is much worse (a sign of things to come''') Things just seem to go downhill from here (I should know -- I looked at the others). If you're just getting into the area, or you need a temporary place, you might have to settle for this, and you probably won't be miserable, but you probably won't enjoy it as much as I did when I first moved in.

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