First off, the staff: it's the same staff for Harper House, Highland Gardens and Highland House (also in HP), and Riverside Towers in New Brunswick. They're very nice and (when you could get a hold of them) willing to help. But two individuals (Sylvia and Dorothy, last I heard; it was Sylvia and Jennifer when we moved in) is nowhere near enough for four complexes. So while I can't really blame them for never getting anything done on time, still, that doesn't mean I liked it.

As an example, most of the problems that our apartment had when we moved in took weeks to fix, and they delayed our move-in a week to replace the carpet (more on the carpet later) then lost the paperwork for the credit and we were charged a $115 late fee for not paying all of the next month's rent (because we'd gotten a credit for the week we couldn't move in). As another example, the doorbell was working when we inspected the apartment in May. It was not working when we moved in in July. They told us it was an electrical problem with the whole building. The last week of January (!!) they finally got around to installing a new intercome system, but they never told us how to work it or labeled which button corresponded to which apartment. We moved out the last week of February, so I don't know if they've ever done so.

Second, parking: you get one spot per apartment, but it's not enforced in any way (no assigned spots, not even a parking sticker), and the spots aren't lined, and a lot of people ignore the lines that are there. There are two lots, one on South First and one on Harper. At the most, the one on South First can hold 18 cars and the one on Harper can hold 16, though it's rare for everyone to park right for it to work that way. The problem is that you are only allowed to park in the lot for your half of the complex. However, South First has 18 spots for 18 apartments (five buildings: 2, 4, 6, 4, 2), and Harper has 16 spots for 26 apartments (five buildings: 4, 6, 6, 6, 4). But if you live on the Harper side, even though there are 10 fewer spots than apartments, you are not supposed to park on the South First side if the Harper side is full. You are supposed to park on the street. (We used to do so, and despite there being 4-5 empty spots in the South First lot, would get a letter on our windshield threatening to tow our car ... which is how we found out about that rule, since it's not written anywhere.) And since most of the houses around the complex don't have garages/driveways, parking on the street is very scarce. Many times we had to park two blocks away with our *one* car.

Third, when we moved in, the apartment had been painted and the carpets steam-cleaned, but no other work had been done: the oven was filthy, the kitchen and bathroom floors and cabinets had not been cleaned, the inside of the fridge was dirty, there was a large hole inside our linen closet where they'd worked on the kitchen plumbing but not patched it, etc. The front burner of the stove also produced a flame about a foot high. We cleaned everything but the oven ourselves, but asked them to please clean the oven because, well, oven cleaner is toxic and it wasn't our fault. Rather than do so (and fix the burner), they promised us a new range (the range that was replaced was obviously new, we felt really bad, we just wanted it cleaned and repaired!). It took about three weeks to arrive, and they didn't tell us when it was coming until the delivery people actually arrived, so we didn't rearrange the furniture for them to install it. So they left it in our living room. For a week.

They'd told us when we moved in that they were renovating each apartment when the old tenants moved out, redoing the kitchen and bath and putting in new carpet to replace the hardwood. This was half true: when our upstairs neighbors moved out, they spent six weeks renovating the apartment (cutting holes in our ceiling and knocking plaster loose in our apartment in the process, and filling our apartment with the sound of drilling, hammering, etc., ten hours a day, six days a week) but didn't replace the hardwood. And our new neighbors apparently had never heard of carpet or removing shoes, or not turning the TV on (in all the rooms!) at 5 am and leaving it on 'til 1 am. And one of them watched a baby in the apartment all day long.

Miscellaneous issues before I get to the real problem:
1. Some punk went through one night and keyed all the cars in the Harper Street lot.
2. The laundry room had 4 washers and 2 dryers for 44 apartments. Some psycho threatened my husband after he [my husband] removed laundry from a washer that had stopped in order to use it. Apparently "you just don't touch a woman's [the psycho's girlfriend's] underwear! And you better not ever do it again!"
3. Some previous management company had re-wired the complex and decided to save money by running along the wire through conduits along the outside of the walls. There were lots of outlets, which was good, but there was a conduit running down the center of each wall, which made furniture placement a mess.
4. That said, the kitchen had (a) no counter space (total of about 3 feet) and (b) only 2 outlets, one directly above the sink and one across the room. There was hardly any cabinet space either, especially since the whole under-sink cabinet was connected, and so you wouldn't really want to put food or dishes under there.
5. We didn't have a CO. Or at least, the one in our apartment was dated 15 months before we moved in and we knew there'd been another tenant in the interim. The office maintained they had a CO on file in the office, but we never saw it and it wasn't posted in our apartment as required by law.
6. They'd painted before we moved in, but hadn't scraped the doors before painting them, so most of the closets wouldn't close (and one wouldn't open, it had been painted shut). They did come by and scrape them down for us.
7. When they renovated the apartments, they would leave the old appliances out by the dumpsters. The garbage company wouldn't take them. There got to be 2 refrigerators and 3 ranges and a toilet out there by the time we moved out.

Moving on to the real problem with our apartment in particular: it was #120-1B. We were the *sixth* family to move out of it in five years. The problem is that it is located directly above the boiler room that heats the whole complex. The apartment is filled with a roaring noise all winter (from mid-October to I don't know when). The floors shake, the walls shake, all the furniture vibrates ... which is especially disconcerting when, for example, you're on the toilet and it's vibrating. It's impossible to sleep--we managed about 3-4 hours per night for four months. Both my husband and I still have ringing in our ears, nearly three months after moving out.

Now, about the carpet: in the summer of 2004, they ripped out the hardwood floors in that apartment and put down special sound-proofing carpet and padding (we didn't know this at the time). However, the family that lived there before us made a mess of it. There were large orange stains on it in the living room and large green stains in the bedroom. They were near the walls and we weren't too bothered, but when we called to let the office know (so we wouldn't be blamed) they offered to replace the carpets for us. We turned them down; they insisted. We delayed our move-in for a week while the carpet people three times tried to install it but didn't tell anyone they were coming (so no one was there to open the door) and left without even calling the office. It was finally installed, and we did notice the new carpet was much, much cheaper and less padded than the old carpet (oh, and they left several small hard things, Lord knows what, under it), but it was summer and we didn't think anything of it.

You can see where this is going, right' They'd replaced the soundproof carpet and padding with a regular, cheap carpet and padding. The heat came on in October, and our apartment became unliveable. But apparently replacing the carpet again was not an option. After complaining to the office staff daily, they finally, around Christmas (remember, this started mid-October) got someone to come look at it. Said person concluded nothing could be done (except replacing the carpet again), so nothing was.

We found out from some of our neighbors in another building that they'd originally had our apartment, but the noise was so bad that they'd insisted on moving. (They had offered us another apartment for December 1, but when we called back the next day to say we'd take it, they said it had already been rented!) And since that family had moved to another apartment, two more families had lived there and moved out mid-winter because of the noise. (Then the family who was lucky enough to have the soundproofing, then us.)

We had to break our lease because of a job move, and while the lease-break fee in the lease was outrageous ($2550--two months' rent plus $250), they managed to find someone else to rent the apartment half a month after we'd moved out (they said they were going to replace the carpet and put soundproofing back in after we moved out) and so called and told us we only needed to pay rent on the time the apartment would be vacant, plus the $250. So it worked out to a bit over $900. We got our full security deposit back, plus about $8 that apparently was based on a miscalculation of our lease-break fee. Of course they sent us the check 10 days past the 30-day deadline required by law, but that's par for the course.

Good thing about the apartments: the grounds were nice, the neighbors were nice, the office staff was nice if rather disorganized (overwhelmed, most likely). The super, Will, was a wonderful man who did his best to respond to everything promptly and mostly succeeded--despite also being responsible for half the Highland Gardens complex. The cost was reasonable for Highland Park. The layout of the apartment was really good, although the second bedroom was tiny (7'11"??10'8", IIRC). The other rooms were quite large. The windows were large with deep sills and each room had two. The complex allowed cats and didn't charge a fee for them. The kitchen appliances were new and the cabinets were of decent quality. The bathroom had been recently renovated. Both the kitchen and bathroom had ceramic tile floors and the bathroom had nice ceramic tile walls and tub surround. There was plenty of closet space. For the most part, they were good about notifying us in advance when work was going to be done. Snow removal was good. Will, the super, was fantastic (it bears repeating).

Lest you think I'm a complainer, I was fully prepared to live in that apartment for years, even with the delayed move-in, having a range in my living room for a week, loud neighbors, and no doorbell. But ... well, we moved out February 18, today is May 6, and we still have hearing problems. (And both of us have professions that require excellent hearing.)

I would recommend any of the other apartments in the complex, particularly if they keep renovating them as people move out. They're lovely apartments at a fair price. Just not the one we lived in.

User Responses
From: kwine	Date: 05/18/2006
My girlfriend was one of those six prior families you mention that occupied 120-1B. Moved in in the summer, and suddenly somewhere around October the world began vibrating. She was out by January. Aside from this, I through the place was so-so. OK for students I guess, but the buildings were quite old and I notice stuff like that.
From: bluebutterfliesgirl	Date: 06/11/2006
I did see some of the older apartments, but as each tenant moved out, they were renovating. So for example, we had all-new appliances, ceramic tile instead of linoleum, new wood cabinets instead of the old painted-white ones, etc. The buildings were pretty old, but it was a nice apartment. The bathroom, although tiny, was the nicest I've ever seen in an apartment complex. How's your girlfriend's hearing? My husband's seems to have suffered permanent damage. Oh, and they've also replaced all the windows with nice vinyl ones that tilt out for cleaning. (Of course, one of ours was slightly too small for the frame, so if you closed it the normal way, it would tilt out and fall on you. We learned to close it by pulling down on the top, not the bottom.)
From: Anonymous	Date: 03/19/2007
BLAHBLAHBLAH. got tired of reading after the first 100 paragraphs
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/04/2008
it still sounds better than Orchard Gardens on S. 11th Ave. What a dump. And management/front office chick couldn't care less about you. They didn't uphold what was in the lease about upstairs people having to carpet 80% of their place if there was a complaint from downstairs (which would be me, and I complained about what sounded like an entire fraternity living upstairs in a one bedroom and playing pick-up basketball games, bowling, boxcar racing, wrestling, cursing, grand theft auto playing at full volume ALL day and ALL night.) what a nightmare

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