White Cliffs

Review of White Cliffs Apts.

From: RHmorrison
Date posted: 5/2/2009
Years at this apartment: 2007-01-01 - 2009-01-01
1 response

I have lived here for 19 months.

In general it's better than most of the other apartment complexes I have lived in.

In general the apartment, common facilities, and grounds are well taken care of.

The sound insulation in the outside walls is excellent.

However, noise carries thru the interior walls from adjoining units.

The noise isn't really bad around my unit; it's mostly usual household noise.

This complex was built around 1982.

It consists of 8 buildings, 3 stories tall, with 24 units per building.

There is a design problem with this complex that I would like to talk about.

When they built it, each unit had mailboxes in the lobby.

In the late 1980s or early 1990s, the USPS talked the owner into changing over to a single cluster of outside mailboxes.

The current owner didn't own the complex then, and the current mgmt company didn't own it.

They don't know why the previous owner made this change, but this happened a lot with multifamily residences in New England at about this time.

This change made life more difficult in two ways.

One is that some of the buildings are a long walk from the mailboxes, which makes it awkward to pick up your mail if you don't have another reason to take a talk at mail time.

(I'm lucky because my building is close to the mailboxes.) The other is that it caused a dangerous traffic situation.

There is a road about 120 feet long that has a building (the one where the rental office is) on one side and the mailboxes on the other.

It's about 24 feet wide.

This width was OK when there weren't any outside mailboxes.

When they changed over to outside mailboxes, they should have anticipated that this road would have a lot more traffic and that therefore they should make it 8-12 feet wider.

But they didn't; they put the mailboxes against the road, with a 3-foot-wide covered standing area in front of them.

Most tenants stop by the mailboxes on the way in or out of the complex by car to pick up their mail.

There are some active parking spaces next to the mailboxes and the landlord asks people to quick-park in these spaces.

But about half of them park in the travel lane to pick up their mail.

Further, it takes about 40 minutes for the letter carrier to put the mail in the boxes, and he/she parks in the travel lane while doing so.

And whenever anyone makes a delivery, and often when a plumber etc.

works on the building, he parks in the travel lane.

The result is a very dangerous traffic situation.

(This spot also sees a lot of foot traffic, and is unsafe for walking.)
A fix for this would be to move the mailboxes back about 10 feet and widen the road.

I estimate it would cost $10K to do this, a cost I doubt the landlord would be willing to pay.

So we will have to live with this situation.

Recommended: YES Overall Rating

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