Station Plaza

Noise: 1) The trains never bothered us (though we always heard them). However, I would wake up to our upstairs neighbors' alarms in the morning, and I could clearly hear the phone conversations of the gentleman next door. 2) There are always awful kids from the nearby school running through the halls, knocking on your door and running away, screaming, shouting and just generally being annoying. They come into the rental office to eat all the cookies, hog the internet in the business center, make rude comments and just generally act like buttholes. 3) DO NOT rent any corner apartment. There is some kind of water pump that is SO LOUD and runs several times a day (more in winter). It literally vibrates the apartment and you can barely hear if someone is talking to you. It WILL wake you up. It was so awful and we were angry that they never told us about this before we moved in (obviously, or they would never rent those corner apartments). 4) Drunks getting out of Bar Louie late at night are sometimes loud and annoying.
"Luxury" Facilities: The workout equipment consists of 2 treadmills, an elliptical trainer, an exercise bike and some weight training devices. The elliptical (remember, the ONLY one) was once broken for OVER TWO MONTHS. Management put up a sign near the two-month mark about fixing it soon, and the sign was soon covered with jeering comments from residents about their previous promises to fix it. Otherwise, the room was clean and tidy. There was no pool (strange for a "luxury" complex in our experience). The business center is OK, the computers were generally well-maintained and there was always paper in the printer/fax/copier.
Bugs: Not a problem, though they did have a silverfish infestation when I lived there over a year ago. People would come into the rental office livid because they felt it was being ignored, but it appeared management was doing their best to control it. It was apparently worse on the upper floors (we only saw a few of them on the lower floor). It might not be a problem anymore.
Appliances & General Construction: Washer/dryer were great, large capacity. Dishwasher was so awful that I stopped using it- it always baked dirty grit onto my dishes no matter what I tried, maintenance admitted they were the worst machines ever. I liked the large bathroom and roman tub, very nice to soak in.
Maintenance: The guys were really nice, hard-working, friendly to talk to. There was one guy who was semi-creepy, but otherwise they were nice and usually fixed things in one go.
Parking: Expect it to be crowded on the ground floor on nice summer days because people park there to attend the concerts and go to restaurants and all that. We have never had our car banged into as much as at this place. Also, there was frequently trash left in the parking spaces, despite large and conveniently-located dumpsters. I think the school kids did this because they thought it was funny. I heard from someone on a higher floor that the gates to control access to their parking area were a joke, always open. They had had their car hit/damaged several times.
Neighborhood: Sorry, Kirkwood is mostly awful. I call it "Jerkwood." If you are not from around there, people stare at you as if you have 3 heads (this has been confirmed by other new Kirkwood transplants I talked to). Yup, there's a Farmer's Market... where you will be stared at shamelessly. My husband had to make faces at people to get them to look away. If you walk anywhere, you will be one of approximately 2 other people who are walking around, because despite living in a small town where everything is in walking distance, people in Kirkwood love to climb into their YUKON XXXXXLLLLLLs and navigate the teeny tiny roads and parking spaces in order to travel a mile to the bakery. Also, the downtown is economically depressed and therefore depressing in general. Businesses are constantly going under and it's full of empty spaces for lease. I always felt sorry for business owners there. The only redeeming parts of living in this area are the stately old houses and beautiful foliage of the surrounding neighborhoods. It's really nice to take long walks there. Also, Global Foods is AWESOME for international groceries and you can walk there. And the post office and library are within walking distance, so that's very nice.
Management: The ladies in the rental office are nice. They are there most of the time and are nice to talk to and usually accomodating. However, they are sneaky (see my notes about the fire pump thing above and the lease breakage below).
Lease terms: We took a longer lease ( then what we originally wanted) because they mentioned that if we need to leave early they would just rent the apartment to someone else. But when we had to actually leave early they were never able to rent the apartment. We strongly suspect that they never actually ahowed the apartment to anyone.

Bottom line: If the only choice you have is between this, that cramped and choice-less King's Gate (think that's the name of the place near the highway and Big Bend) or the DEPLORABLE Timberlake apartments, this is your best bet. There doesn't seem to be a lot of choice in Kirkwood, as most of the stuff we looked at had been converted to condos. Just be prepared to overpay and whatever you do, make sure you will be staying there for the full term of your lease.

Last updated: 5/6/2009

Recommended: NO Overall Rating

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