extremely nice, but $$$
From:
cgervis02
Date posted:
9/16/2002
Years at this apartment:
2001
-
2002
Well, for starters, the address listed for this place is wrong... unless something has changed that I am not aware of... it should be 3131 Walnut St, Phila. PA 19104 Anyway...
The Left Bank... My boyfriend and I moved into a 1bedroom apartment in March of 2001. We are the first to live in our actual apartment and were one of the first to move into the floor. The place only opened in January of 2001. It is a refurbished building, directly across the street from Drexel University's Main Building.
It is, on the whole, a REALLY nice place and I have thoroughly enjoyed living here and hope to continue to do so. Our apartment is very nice! It came with a microwave, stove, oven, dishwasher, garbage disposal, stacked washer/dryer, and A/C. We also have gorgeous 12ft high ceilings and random columns throughout the apartment, which I really like.
The building is always kept very clean. The maintence guys are very nice, helpful, pleasant, and friendly. I think they go above and beyond, when it comes to treating some residents of the building with respect, when those residents won't even give them the time of day sometimes.
We have a front desk at the main entrance of the building, too. The guys that sit at the front desk are always friendly and extremely helpful if you ever need anything. They keep things under control and really enforce the rules the building has set in place concerning guests, etc. Which I think is VERY good.
The residents at The Left Bank aren't the friendliest. You rarely ever see anyone in the halls. This has its ups and its downs. It's nice because it is pretty quiet, so you don't usually have to worry about noisy neighbors, occasionally you hear loud people in the hallways, but they are usually just walking by... It's bad because you can walk down the hallway and pass someone and they will avoid making eye contact so that they don't have to say hi to you. It's also bad because, in the event that I had a cat, I wouldn't be able to comfortably trust one of my neighbors with my key so they could take care of it while I was away or something. I also think the building has a lot more college kids from U. Penn and Drexel than they ever really wanted... Being a Drexel student myself, I don't mind this at all. And generally, the college kids I have seen there, are the ones that care about their education, or don't want to live in the dorms, but do want to live near campus, or if they are the partying kind, they generally do not do it in their apartment, or at least they do not have huge parties with lots of people and noise. Although, speaking of noise, the walls are thin... So you can occasionally hear music, talking, noises of many kinds, cabinet doors closing, etc. through them, but on the whole, unless it is during the wee hours of the morning, it's not anything bothersome (except for some noises you can hear through the walls, I don't think anyone needs to hear those kinds of noises at any time....)
The management office is another story. From my own experience and from what I have heard from a few other residents that I have actually talked to, management seems really fake, like they really do just care about your money and not whether you really are happy living there. The building manager is usually available if you need him, you do see him a lot and he is actually the one who shows you to your apartment on move-in, well he was when we moved in. Aside from an occasional question or two of the management office, we generally try to avoid them....'
The $$$... well, I guess they are competitive, my bank account doesn't think so, but, for what we pay for and what we have, it does tend to even itself out...until the rent increases. When we first moved in, it was $1345, plus parking. We were notified in Nov/Dec of last year about the rent increase. I am stressing about it this year... but hopefully it will only be another 60bucks, because we really DO NOT want to move. In the lease I think it says something about at least a 10% increase each year, but last time ours was only about 3.5%.
This place has its faults, but after reading a lot of these other reviews on this site... I feel like I am living in heaven. At least some people who work at The Left Bank, mostly the maintence guys and the front desk guys, are willing to help if they can...and the rule with them is basically, treat them how you would want them to treat you and they will bend over backwards if you needed them to. Unfortunately some residents do take advantage of that because they think they are more important than the rest of the world, but you'll have that.
As for a gym, you have to pay an additional fee, so we don't use it. My personal opinion is that if I am paying this much money for rent, I should be able to use the facilities for free, but that is not the case. And, last I heard, there was an additional fee on top of the gym membership for exercise classes, like yoga or aerobics. I can understand an additional fee for the classes because you are generally calling in outside instructors, but the gym membership should be free.
Oh and one more thing. It is a secure building, so their are access cards for the gated parking lots and for all the entrances into the building, even the main door. And you can tune your tv into one of the tv channels and watch the security camera to see who is at the main front door if you want. And delivery guys can't come up to your apartment, you have to come meet them in the lobby, which I think is good too. They really enforce no strange people wandering around the building. If you are a guest, you have to sign in and someone has to be expecting you for them to let you up.
Anyway, I think I have rambled on enough at this point. Sorry for the randomness. I definitely do reccommend living here if you can afford it and if they have anymore vacancies.
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