Streamside Apartments

it's okay, not great From: -Anonymous- Date posted: 8/28/2008 Years at this apartment: 2007 - 2008   This is the most reasonably priced apartment complex in the area for what you get. We pay $950/mo for a 2 BR. There are ups and downs. The office staff and maintainence staff are mostly hispanic and barely speak english. It is hard to get a straight answer out of the office staff. But the maintainence staff are always polite and nice. I always get a response withing 48 hours if I call about a maintainence issue. For big things, like when my refrigerator was broken, they tried to put me off and I had to harass them for a few days, but they put in a new one. The only time I had a problem with bugs was when my dirty neighbors across the hall were evicted. I saw 3 bugs in one week and called the office, and the exterminator came the next week and sprayed. They come to all the apartments once or twice a year and check to make sure there's no mice and no bugs. The apartments are nice and big, and being renovated every time someone moves out of an old one. The new style is nice. The fixtures are old, but they work, and I've never run out of hot water. The floors in the bedrooms are hardwood, linoleum in the kitchen and baths, and carpet in the LR, BRs and hall. A cleaning staff comes to clean the halls and laundry room 5 days a week, and maintainence is always picking up around the community (because it needs it). The laundry facilities are in each building, shared by 12 apartments. They're $1.50 to wash and $1.50 to dry, but they're large washers:6-7 pairs of adult jeans. The apartments also have the biggest balconies I've ever seen. They're about 5 ft wide and at least 15 ft long. I don't let my kids play in the playground, but there is plenty of room to play on the balcony, and there are many playgrounds and parks in the area, including Great Seneca State Park, only 5 minutes away. If you like to keep to yourself, this is a nice place. I won't have anything to do with the neighbors at large. One big downside is the neighborhood kids. The community is pretty separate from the surrounding town, but the resident kids and their friends, apparently all latchkey kids, roam around or loiter whenever school isn't in session. They litter and break glass and they've vandalized the little playground for the kids. We call them the dumpster kids because a group of them sit on a low wall near the dumpster all summer long. We had to take their photos and file an official written complaint with the office last summer after some of them were cussing at our 1 and 3 year olds and threatening my husband. They seem to have calmed down since then. But they're still there. The lifeguards end up babysitting a good number of them all summer. There are constantly groups of kids on skateboards loitering in the parking lots and streets and blocking traffic. Another big downside that's gotten much worse is the young adult males who hang around in the parking lots. Some of them seem to be drug dealers. Many of them seem to be gang members. And the number of them who have started spending much of the day and night walking pit bulls around the community make me nervous to take the garbage out. I've seen the dogs go after people, and the owners barely able to contain them. Also, the pool was closed much of last summer because they kept failing health inspections. They did a major renovation this spring, but it was still closed down several times. We didn't get pool passes (which are free) this year after one man showed up the end of last summer and flashed a gun at another man who was in the pool. I'm glad we didn't. The people who swim there are dirty and gross. The men sit around fully dressed and the teenaged girls are barely clothed. They stand around rubbing on each other in a disturbing manner. I'm guessing the pregnancy rate of teens here will be high this winter. There is a security company hired by our community and many others. They drive through on occasion. They don't really do much. I have called them on several occasions, like when a woman was parked in front of our house blowing her horn insistantly for 15 minutes at 3 am one day. They come. But they're slow. It took them 10 more minutes to get here, and by then she was gone. But at least there is some support for the residents that doesn't involve the police. Another upside: it's very centrally located. The Lake Forest Mall is about a half mile away. We are only 3 minutes from 270, and from there, only about 15 minutes from the 495 loop, and it's easy to get into the city. The area also has many major employers, including IBM and Lockheed-Martin, which are both only 3 minutes away, and the Dept of Weights and Measures (5 min) and the Dept of Energy (15min). There is also access to Higher Education, with Univ of MD, Johns Hopkins, Mont. Co. Comm. College, and a branch of Strayer Univ. all within 15-20 minutes drive. There is also a water park and mini golf course nearby at Bohrer Park. The pool is crowded, but clean, well-supervised and has water slides.

Recommended: YES Overall Rating

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