Like living here, despite imperfections
From:
-Anonymous-
Date posted:
9/25/2005
Years at this apartment:
2003
-
2005
It's hard to provide a simple 1-5 rating on some things, so I elaborate some below.
In general, I have recommend Klein to a number of people, despite a few glitches. We used to live in a midwestern city that had a significantly better rental market in terms of service and price, so we arrived in Philly spoiled, but in general we've been pretty happy with Garden Court Plaza. Much cheaper than center city, very large attractive apartments, a range of conveniences from shipping and receiving packages to owning a dog to getting around without a car, being in an eclectic neighborhood, seeing the sunset every night, being close to Penn campus, having an indoor parking spot, etc.
More info on the rating questions:
If you use the parking garage, it's excellent--everyone has a designated space, it's well lit and secure, don't have to deal with off-street parking nightmares. However, they just raised the rate from $75 a month to $100 a month. Apparently that's still a "good price" in Philly, but a 33% rate hike in one year'! [Add to that the fact that Philly car insurance is just over the top expensive, but that's not Klein's fault.] It is worth mentioning that most people don't need a car anyway. We are a 10-minute bike ride from Penn with bike lanes all the way, the city buses are pretty frequent and stop a block from here, and Klein provides a free shuttle that takes people to campus during the school year (unfortunately the morning driver last year oscillated between arriving tardy and leaving ahead of schedule, hopefully they have someone good again this year), Penn and Drexel both have free shuttles, Philly Car Share has two pods in this area, etc.
We've experienced zero noise between apartments. The walls are good thick 1920s plaster, no cheapie wallboard. However, Spruce is a major route for emergency vehicles, and there's this #$%^& ice-cream truck that circles the block all night long in the summer. Aside from that, we're very satisfied.
The grounds are attractive, especially the green space out back for grilling and the grass and gardens on the roof of the parking garage. There is a duck pond on the garage roof too, which is really cool except it has been desperately in need of cleaning for the past several years--the ducks are swimming in green muck.
Also, we have a dog and we LOVE the fact that Garden Court Plaza is dog friendly and has a nice dog run out back. However, when we have a lot of rain it turns into a mudbath, and when it's dry it can get incredibly dusty. Klein used to lay down new gravel/rock periodically to keep the dog run nice, but for some reason, in the last year dog owners have had to beg and plead and complain for months (and inadvertantly track mud all over the lobby carpets) before they would do this maintenance.
Safety: If someone evil were hell-bent on getting into this building, sure, they probably could, but because the desk staff know everyone, there are codes which make getting into the elevators and parking garage just that bit more difficult, and there are multiple security cameras, 99% of the riff-raff stay out and this is a completely reasonable place to live. I haven't heard of anyone having anything stolen or strangers being in the halls.
Construction: They built this building well in the 20s. Downside, the windows are 80 years old and since they re-paint the apartments whenever new people move in, the windows have a few coats and can get sticky. A couple of our doors had the same problem, and we had them plane them so it would open in the summer months. Now they work fine. We've also had problems with leaky water and steam pipes in the walls, which we realized only after the plaster started to bubble up in places. But they did fix it right away. Oh, and our apartment is huge, has beautiful hardwood parquet floors, tons of closet space, and a decent kitchen. The building is steam heated and it can get hot and dry in the winter months--the first winter we were cracking windows to escape the heat, but this year we had a revelation and had the plumber came up and fix some radiator valves, and it was much better. We do use a humidifier in the bedroom though. In the summer, we get a decent cross-breeze, but we also put in some window A/Cs for those muggy weeks.
Maintenance quality really depends on who gets sent. Once, some cockroaches found themselves a comfy spot in the sealed-off area that plumbers access to work on bathroom water pipes, and the critters discovered a gap and got into our apartment. Maintenance sealed the gaps up immediately, and they had the exterminators out fumigate the apartment plumbing ducts soon afterwards. (We have not, by the way, ever had mouse problems. We think those in this building who have reported them may be on lower floors near the trash chute' Or perhaps they don't have lidded garbage cans or their dogfood bags aren't well covered') Also, we've had a few plumbers, all excellent.
But then there have been some incompetent maintenace people too. When we asked them to plane the top of the bathroom door so the door wouldn't stick in the summer months, they came promptly, but they didn't bother to cover anything in the bathroom before they got to work, and weeks later we'd still find woodshavings here and there. We also asked them to fix a chipped piece of the beautiful parquet flooring in our living/dining room. It looks worse now--different color, not stained, not even square. Good thing you don't notice it because of where the table sits.
The folks who work at the desk are great, many of them know us by name, all of them say hi, and they can help with anything--packages, mail, forgetting your apartment key, watching your groceries while you park the car, you name it. The manager however, is annoying! I mentioned that we spent months trying to get them to put new rock in the dog run because it had become a mudbath. To one person she claim the rock it was on order, when another person would stop in later, she would ask where the rock is ordered from (''), and when another person would stop by, she would tell that person that she weren't aware of a problem. Fortunately I don't frequently need to deal with her!
In sum, from talking to many people about their Philly apartments and landlords, I think this is one of the best combinations of price and quality for people who want to live in a quiet building near Penn campus, (especially for those with pets).
|
|
I'm the author!
